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McDozers Blogs

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INTRODUCTION (Welcome to the Real World, Neo!)

We all rely on the input we were given since we were children. The information were being fed is what shapes our world view and determines our perception of things. But what if a substantial amount of the input and information we were being fed is wrong and false? What if some of that information even consists of downright lies? What if were being purposely deceived by people and forces trying to manipulate us in order for them to take advantage of us, control us and use us? Although this may sound like a very bleak scenario to some, if one walks through life with open eyes and ears, eventually they will have to confront the fact that this scenario is our reality, and that one of our greatest challenges in life is to find and uncover the truth that has been buried beneath the large pile of lies that makes up the Matrix of our supposed reality. Perhaps the most effective tool for that purpose, and the most powerful weapon at our disposal in our combat against a sea of lies is as unbelievable as it may sound to some the Bible. Needless to say, this is also one reason why the Bible has become a principal target of the NWO propaganda machine. Not only that, but many of the institutions run by professing followers of the Bible (aka churches) have been infiltrated and manipulated to such a degree that Christendom per se has become a not very desirable ideology in the eyes of most clear thinkers.

All these factors make the task of discovering the foundation of truth in our journey through life an ever increasing challenge. What happens is that we underestimate our Enemy and the extent to which he would lie to us. In fact, most of us are not even aware of the fact that there is an unseen enemy at work against us. Unfortunately the Bible tells us that due to mans own choices, our world is presently being controlled by the Enemy of our souls, who is posing as the god of this world as a usurper, setting the stage for a world totally controlled by him in every way: economically, politically and ideologically a scenario which has been advertised during the past decades as the approaching New World Order, a world government which will eventually be headed by one man who will ultimately represent the personification of the Devil, just as Jesus represented God to believers. The coming and revelation of this man of sin or son of perdition, as the Bible calls him, is precisely what is necessary and missing for the rightful King and Ruler of the world to return and free and save us from the grip of the usurper. The supernatural 2nd Coming of Jesus Christ (or Yashua the Messiah), anticipated by millions of believers around the world, will constitute the end of the world as we know it for some, and yet for others only a new beginning of the way mankind had originally been intended to live by its Creator. The one thing required for anyone to make sure that the Kingdom of God for them will be not the end, but a new beginning, is to accept the gift God gave to mankind in offering His Son Jesus ( = Savior) as the lamb of sacrifice that would pay the price for our sins. Recognizing and admitting that we are sinners and that in order to be cleansed and redeemed from our guilt we are in need of a divine Savior, all we have to do is confess to Jesus that we need Him and ask Him to come into our lives along with His immeasurable love and forgiveness, which will then transform our lives into truly meaningful, spiritual and in fact, eternal ones. Originally, life was not intended to end. The only reason we die is because of our sins. The purpose for Jesus first Coming was to take that load from off our backs if we only receive Him. With His Second Coming, He will manifest that same redeeming power on a universal scale and deliver us from evil, just as He taught us to pray: Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth, and deliver us from evil Those who are tired of evil can find liberation from it in childlike simplicity by simply accepting Jesus and saying to Him, Yes, Lord, I accept You as my Savior. Please, come into my life, forgive me for my sins and fill me with Your Spirit. In the name of Jesus I pray, Amen.

The Majority (Always Right?)

Jesus wrapped up His view on the majority, when he said in Matthew 7:12 & 13: Wide is the gate, & broad is the way, that leads to destruction, & many there be which go in thereat; because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, & few there be that find it. Throughout the Old Testament we find indications of Gods not very complimentary view of the masses: Gideon sent home 32.000 soldiers to win a battle with 300 chosen; Noah & his 7 family members were the sole survivors of a worldwide flood; and the survivors of the destruction of Sodom & Gomorrah were only Lot & his daughters. It takes strong faith in such a God to be willing to be counted to a minority in our democracy-oriented age, which implicates that the majority is always right. I personally belong to a tiny minority of people in the country Im living in, who dont believe nor follow the belief pattern of the majority, which states that we all came from an explosion in Space billions of years ago, which produced the stars & planets, and by pure chance, through chemical processes, on some planets life evolved into thousands of different living species, including the intelligent, thinking & organized human race. Opposed to this common view, Im an outsider. I belong to a despised & ridiculed group of Christian believers called Creationists. Now, if you perform a Google search on the word creationist in my country, youll come up with a lot of controversy, and the adjectives accompanying the word in the results range from evil & fanatic to ridiculous. To be more specific, Im a Young Earth Creationist, one of those, who, contrary to the accepted belief that the Earth is billions of years old, chooses to credit the given age of mankind and the Earth as derived from the amount of years given in the Bible, which amounts to a bit over 6.000. In fact, this belief was held by the vast majority of people who had any ideas about the Earths age for the longest time. And just because it has been drilled into peoples minds for the past hundred years or so that It aint so, but..., and the fact that this but has been backed up by most scientists of the century, who have been working hard on spending tax payers money around the globe to provide evidence for it, for me, is not sufficient reason to join the majority in their belief. I havent always been this foolish, as I was a firm believer in the theory of Evolution as a child, and had to choose in my teens whether I was going to continue believing in this theory which had been ingrained in my mind or the Bible. To be honest, this has caused me a lot of conflict over the past 2 decades. Recently, though, I have found that Im not alone in my unconventional stand of faith, and that not only supposed lunatics like myself preferred the Bibles version of our origins to the commonly accepted version, but even highly educated scientists around the world share my very howbeit apparently abstruse belief in a World created by God in 6 days. In fact, evidence is emerging from scientific ranks, which poses definite problems to the widely accepted theory of Natural Selection. Books are being written about the inaccuracy & unreliability of data provided by the methods of carbon- & radiation dating, which supposedly determine the age of rock strata & fossils. Books are being written about the violation of the laws of nature & physics, which evolutionists demand of their followers to accept. Books are being written about new possibilities & theories regarding time and the speed of light, which indicate that even though we can see stars that are billions of light years away, this doesnt mean those stars are actually billions of years old. And what about the fact

that matter cannot create information (of which an awful lot is needed, as scientists are finding out, even for a single cell, which turned out to be a conglomeration of complicated chemical factories)? The fossils which Darwin was already wishing & hoping for in his own book, namely those of intermediary forms between two species, are still missing. More & more information about highly complicated natural processes in even the tiniest particles of creation, like one single cell, is emerging, which pose mathematical problems for the probability for even the most primitive of living things to have evolved by chance, much less entire races. The so-called ancestors of man are being concocted of fractions of bones in the minds of ambitious scientists who get a lot of money for their work, only for us to find out years later that that theory was another mistake or fraud. While the original discovery is widely publicized by every magazine on the globe, the rebuttal only being found out by those who care enough to inform themselves. The amount of people living today, had the first human couple really lived a million years ago is a mathematical monstrosity, which seems to be deliberately ignored by any math teacher. The size of the sun at the rate of its loss of energy would have posed serious problems for any life to come into being on Earth a billion years ago. But whenever we turn on the TV and let our children watch a nature documentary, whenever we open a school book on Biology, History or geography, were being bombarded with matter-of-fact statements about events which were supposed to have happened billions of years ago, as if the narrator or writer had seen them with their own eyes, leaving not the slightest hint of a doubt whether these things were really so. Why? Who is so interested in having everybody believe a theory about our origins, that even its own initiator died in shame about having brought it up in the first place? Why is this belief so widely accepted by both, communists, fascists, AND of course, our good, average citizen of modern democracy? Well, for one thing, its the perfect legitimate excuse for each of us to do our own thing. If were all nothing more but an accident in Space, result of pure coincidence, Big Bang side-effects, no God, no Creator, no rules needed, nobody Who made us, so, nobody to judge us for anything we might ever do wrong hereafter, we can all pretty much do what we want without our conscience bugging us about it. Maybe that has something to do with our ever growing crime rates? Believing that everything came forth from life-less matter gives us the freedom to not make any difference between the material and the spiritual. In other words, I can choose to put money or things on the same level with God, or let them replace Him altogether. (Is it really the God of Love they're supposedly trusting in on the Dollar bill?) Furthermore, it gives us permission to kill unborn babies with a 'perfectly clean conscience' by means of abortion. It is interesting to note that our 'ancestors', those who lived before the flood, according to the Bible, worshipped the god Moloch (which some scholars identify with 'Mammon', the god of wealth, mentioned by Jesus in Matthew 6) and honored him by sacrificing their newborns. (Still wonder why God would have allowed the flood?) Looks like our habits haven't changed all that much, we just give them different names. As the well-famed English writer C. S. Lewis stated (see quotes below), Evolution is the religion of materialism. Lets face it, most of us modern men & women, we wanna be our own gods. We dont want some big old bearded guy on a throne telling us what to do & what not to, right? We dont mind the guy we elected doing it (or the one we didnt elect, but the majority did), at least not that much, why, we cringe a little with every raise of the percentage of our money we have to pay him in taxes, after all, some more evidence needs to be found to support our religion..., I mean,

theory of Evolution, our armies need to be fed & armed to deliver us from Hottentots who believe differently from the way we do & threaten our freedom. I mean, we are the people, right? Were the ones with the money, with the machines, with the best political system, so, weve got to defend ourselves from those maniacs, right? After all, here youre free to believe whatever you want to believe: Believe in aliens as responsible for our origins, if you want, why, thats a very popular one. Something smells fishy, though, and its not because of remains of primordial soup, either. In a controversial tome of notes taken during a supposed meeting of powerful people over a century ago, somebody predicted about the times in which we are now living: The intellectuals ... will puff themselves up with their knowledge and without any logical verification of them will put into effect all the information available from science, which our agentur specialists have cunningly pieced together for the purpose of educating their minds in the direction we want. Do not suppose for a moment that these statements are empty words: think carefully of the successes we arranged for Darwinism, Marxism, Nietzscheism. To us, at any rate, it should be plain to see what a disintegrating importance these directives have had upon the minds of the masses.

THE ILLUSION OF MONEY

A Study & Comment By McDozer We the people have given the power to create money to a banking cartel that annually collects billions of dollars in interest on assets it created out of thin air. It uses this money creating monopoly to suck up most of the real wealth (resources etc.) of the planet. (Henry Makow) Why would people place their hard earned savings into government currencies, which are in reality only pieces of paper that a government can create or destroy at will? Governments have virtually no assets and produce no income. Why are we told (and most people believe) that government bonds are the most secure investment available? Why do we believe that our loans to an entity with no assets or income is secure?... with the world on the verge of financial collapse, why do most people feel that gold is a poor investment? With Keynsian economics being based on flawed logic, why do most people believe that governments can control the economy based on this false theory?

The only conclusion that I can formulate is that most people have lost the ability to critically analyze information, and are subject to government mind control programs. While most people choose to ignore reality, the world is now facing the most severe financial contraction in history. (John Kutyn Financial Analyst)

The Green Paper Pig - (D.Berg)

The most ancient & the longest lasting of any economic system is the economic system of tribalism ancient socialism. War calls for an increase of factory output (weapons, etc.), factory increase means more workers being hired & paid. This means more people have more money to buy products of all other industries. This increase in jobs and spending is a Boom. Now, the businessman, of course, is making profits from all this buying & selling. He makes billions of paper dollars, but these paper dollars have lost some of their value because of their great circulation. People value them less, spend more & are willing to pay higher prices, so the dollars buy less. The loss in value comes from the fact that the sellers of commodities can ask higher prices for their things because they know that with all this money around, some sucker is going to buy their wares. -This is INFLATION: More money for less product. The merchant with his billions of dollars from the Boom knows that each one of those dollars would be worth more if less people had money to spend. So he lowers the circulation of paper money by calling up the King, (president or congress), who in turn calls up the Captain of War & tells him to stop fighting. The Captain of War has no more use for rockets, planes, bombs, tanks, jeeps, army clothes, boats, bullets, 3.2 beer & all the multitude of things necessary to fight a war. The merchant stops his assembly lines & the slaves are sent home & the paychecks stop. The other industries that dont make war equipment soon stop producing because the slaves have no paychecks. Everyone is broke, but the merchant is happy, because the value of his paper dollars is increasing because they become so scarce & buy more at lower prices. People will give up their cars & houses just to get their hands on a little money. This is a Bust, recession, or depression. People sell their possessions for a little money, and the Big Merchant ends up with everything (Gen.47:20).. Of course, there is always a chance of a slaves revolt at this point (Revolution). So the merchant takes a few straws off the camels back by giving them a few crumbs. But the quickest way out of depression is, of course, to start another war... So Big Business continues to produce war toys, well lubricated with the blood of human sacrifices, as usual.... cannon fodder of the DEATH CULTS genocidal economy. (s.a. Rev.17:7; 18:4,23,24; Jer.32:35; Ezek.16:20,21; 23:39) The power of the Death Triangle (War, Business, Politics) is of spiritual origin (Rev.6:3-8; 16:13: 18:3,24), and it must be fought on a spiritual level (2.Cor.10:4; Eph.6:12; Heb.4:12; 1.John 3:8; 1.Tim.1:18; Rev.1:3). The dollar became nothing but a piece of paper which is worth as much as people are willing to believe its worth... only backed by faith. The dollar will find its own level at whatever they think it is worth... The money for war comes from taxes on the people, but the government borrows the money in bonds... so people buy bonds to loan the government money...suddenly were beginning to wake up & find that billions & billions of dollars have been thrown away in the most wasetful thing you can possibly do: making war!

Presidents use war as a remedy for a Depression. Hitler blamed all the problems of Germany on the radicals & Communists & Jews (terrorists?) & Germany began to prosper because of the tremendous amount of money being spent on war materials...industry boomed, & the Germans began to take over the countries of Europe. The rich are always thinking that somehow their god mammon will protect them if they feed him enough of their children or other peoples children for cannon fodder... Western economy, capitalist economy can only thrive on war. No ungodly leader can solve the problem of having both peace & plenty without war. As long as a nation demands more than they need they have to rob the poor to get it, & to rob the poor to get it they have to wage war. Even non-war industries are making money at the expense of the poor of other nations. Say I have certain things you need. But I want the lions share, live in luxury & the most of everything. So I charge you unreasonably high prices & I refuse to pay more than rock-bottom prices for yours. This is commercial war: in order to get my luxuries Im starving you to death. The capitalistic financiers of Europe are like a bunch of pimps Theyve got a whole lot invested in this Whore, & they dont want to lose it. She thinks shes their owner, but theyre her owner, and theyre trying to save their own investments. Its totally artificial for them to support the dollar. If theyd just let the dollar sink where it belongs, Amerika would sink. But they each own too much of a share in the Whore, & they dont want to lose their investments. So the European money pimps support her worthless dollars... theyll go broke, -- very broke!(see Revelation 14, 16 19). The Arabs control most of the worlds oil, through which they are fast getting a hold of most of its money. Without Arab oil, the industries of the western world could be slowed virtually to a standstill. Its the rich West that worries about oil and has got to control that Arab oil, or Arab oil will soon control the West... The dollar only exists if you believe in it, and is going to evaporate when people lose faith in it, it will be gone. It gobbles everybody up that believes in it, & tramples everybody in the mud that thinks it exists. But for those who know its just a monster of imagination, it vanishes! Its nothing! Someone is manipulating the dollar & using it as a weapon to destroy their enemies, and if you believe in it, it will destroy you, but if you refuse to believe that it even exists, it has no power over you at all! It only exists if you believe it exists, the god of America, the idol they worship. It has no power over you unless youre one of its worshippers. The money-makers are its high priests & its priesthood, & it was created in their temples & they control it & manipulate it to their own advantage against their enemies. The dollar is a money-makers creation. Itll devour you if you trust in it. It doesnt exist except according to mens faith in it & their imagination, like Puff, the Magic Dragon. It is the figment of their imagination, but they use it to their own advantage. When exposed to the light of day, the truth of God, it turns to dead grey ashes! It will be burnt out & destroyed when the fire of the faith of men in it is gone! It pollutes the hearts & minds of men & captures their bodies & destroys their souls. There was no such thing as the dollar until it was dreamed up by Washington. Their final idol is an idol of paper! The money-makers joke on the world! Deceived & destroyed by their own creation & deception. Paper money is a fairly new thing in World history, which our clever capitalistic governments quickly latched on to as a much more convenient means of exchange than metal coins, & a far easier & cheaper way to manufacture worthless money & cheat the people! The dollar is really worthless & without any intrinsic value whatsoever with no backing or redeemability of actual value. It is actually only worth what others are willing to give you for it. When the paper money loses ist power over the minds of men & they lose their faith in its value as a mere medium of monetary exchange, its value goes down to the nothing from whence it came, because it was

worth Nothing in the first place, no more than the paper on which it was printed! It was only made to be thought worth something by the faith of man in his paper god. The powers which control the valuable, needed materials of the world, such as oil, raw materials & foodstuffs, etc. will wield the government of the world. The time will come when money is no longer used as a medium of exchange, & the people of the world will be ruled by a one-world government who will control them by the material power it wields & its control of goods & services. The money medium will be replaced by a very remarkable credit system in which every person in the world who belongs to the system will bear a credit number, a number which will be given him permanently, without any possibility of counterfeit or manipulation, because it will be branded on each person (Rev.13:16,17). The monetary system is the money-god of Mammon, which the world worships! Money, in a way, is the image of the beast of this world, reflection of his power the entangling demon idol the people worship... the love of money is the root of all evil (1.Tim.6:10). The total downfall of America could be the collapse of the economic system, worldwide confusion brought on by energy shortage, the upheavals in the Mid-East, or atomic war. Economic collapse could bring down our whole highly industrialized modern civilization as we know it! The System is headed for a crash! If even one link, like oil, breaks in the chain of their economic system, it can cause a sudden collapse of the whole System! Values are really dependent on peoples faith in somebodys word! Their faith crashes & things dwindle down to nothing! An inflation thats so bad that it finally just absolutely explodes & collapses the whole monetary system will literally blow the whole world banking system, its financial system, to absolute bits! Itll be a total world collapse of the monetary system! (David Berg in Who Are The Rebels, War, Boom Bust [1970], The Dollar , Nitler [1971], The Amerikan Way, Amerika The Whore!, Gaddhafis Magic Lamp, The Green Paper Pig, Oplexicon, The Christmas Monster, The Comet Comes, The Crash, The Money Explodes! [1973] )

"There IS No Spoon!"
Remember the scene in the movie The Matrix where Neo & Trinity are clinging to the cable of a crashing elevator, being pulled up, & Neo says, There IS no spoon!, remembering the secret of a little boys ability to make a spoon bend by the power of his mind by the simple knowledge that their whole world wasnt real? Well, that crashing elevator was the worlds economic system. Just as unreal as the make-belief world of the Matrix, (in fact if there is anything the Matrix truly symbolizes, its our money), as the above quotes have stated, only those who hold on to the saving rope or the magic Wand of the truth as found in Gods Word, will be able to rise up when the money will come down. Insiders know that its merely a question of time (and not a lot left of it) until the creators of this grand illusion will allow the bubble to burst, leaving us in a scenario that will make the Stock Market Crash of Black Monday in October 1929, which caused wealthy businessmen to lose everything they had & jump out of their sky-scraper windows, look like a picnic by comparison.

The political situation in the Mid-East, the US determination to attack Iraq under a president that makes Richard Nixon look like Bambi, create a scenario into which David Bergs predictions of the 70s fit more appropriately than ever. In Matthew 24:35 Jesus said, Heaven & earth shall pass away, but My Words shall not pass away! If you take that statement literally, this would mean: Its only a matter of time until our world is history, and the only thing that will endure is the Rock of His truth. And anyone who stands on it, clings to it, builds their house or life on it: in other words, listens to & obeys His Words by absorbing & applying them, will rise above the created illusion of our temporary System. The sands of time will wash away, but you wont! Funny thing, they say, Time is money! So, if money isnt real, but an illusion created by the Rulers of the darkness of this world to enslave mankind, and time IS money, we must assume that, as James Taylor sang, The thing about time is that time isnt really real... One thing is for sure, and thats that it wont last forever. For the Bible predicts, time shall be no more (Rev.10:6). And just like money one day will cease to have power over the inhabitants of the world, so shall time. Take Gods Word for it!

Stairway To Heaven ? - NO CREDIT CARD NEEDED!

Why do people believe in Bible prophecy? Well, there are a few points about Bible prophecy that are very hard to explain away, the way scientists love to explain away the miracles of the Bible or the miracle of creation, for that matter, by very shaky, but scientific explanations (like the theory of Evolution....). For example, how come a book, which has been allegedly in existence for thousands of years (-and even if one would doubt that: a book which definitely & as a matter of fact has existed for at least centuries-), how can such a book describe events, situations & conditions which have only been possible & imaginable for the past 100 years? Take for example this astounding verse in the Book Of Revelation, written by Jesus own apostle John (also author of the gospel & the epistles of John), when he was 90 years old, living in Roman exile on the island of Patmos in what is now Turkey, in A.D. 97: In the 18th verse of the 11th chapter of that book we find this amazing statement: And the nations were angry, and thy wrath is come, and the time of the dead, that hey should be judged, and that thou shouldest give reward unto thy servants the prophets, and to the saints, and them that fear thy name, small and great; and shouldest destroy them which destroy the earth. You see, 2000 years ago, or even 200 years ago, that statement did not make any sense. Because nobody was able to even begin to try to destroy the Earth. All the weapons of war invented until the beginning & even through most of the first half of the 20th century would have only been a joke, trying to inflict serious damage to our planet. This has radically changed since the invention of the atomic bomb. Not only that, but since then, man has increased his amount of pollution, emission of heat and the amount of deforestation and his exploitation of the Earth in general, to such an extent, that he is literally not only threatening to destroy the Earth, but actually doing so. And yet, only 100 years ago, this would have been utterly inconceivable. There is another amazing section in the Book Of Revelation, which is talking about something which hasnt happened yet, but which scientists, and entire companies of electronic experts are currently working on: In Revelation 13:16 & 17, this ancient book, the Bible, foretells a man who, causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name...... Its this particular prediction I would like to zoom in on. We have here the prediction of what many visionaries have dreamed of since money exists: the cashless society - Buy or sell with nothing but a small, perhaps invisible mark in your right hand or forehead, not even a credit card needed. Isnt that a common internet slogan: NO CREDIT CARD NEEDED! No credit card, no cash, no cheque, only a number apparently, implanted into your right hand or forehead. Cool, huh!? Well, not so cool in the light of the previous verse, stating that this same fellow will kill all those who refuse to worship some strange talking, image of the Beast... that sounds a bit suspicious to me, if you ask me. But lets first expound on this cashless society. As a person who has personally experienced not only the comings & going of zeros behind the values of existing currencies, such a the Dinar of Yugoslavia in the seventies, but also the abolition & replacement of whole currencies within months, such as the Argentinean peso, first by new pesos & later by currencies with completely different names, like the Austral, I have experienced that money, when it comes down to it, is just paper with a few numbers & images on it, worth as much as people determine or claim or believe it to be worth. Here today, gone tomorrow. Not in any way comparable to currencies of former centuries, like silver & gold... (although someone might ask, who its to say which metal is worth more than another, just because one is more rare than the other... But still:) paper can be produced & replaced any old time, as long as there are still a few trees left in this world. Then there are historic events, like the Global financial depression, beginning in October 1929 & stretching through the early 1930s, giving rise to great power to men like Adolph Hitler & a few of his contemporaries. I have actually not only seen, but had in possession money bills from that time, which had incredible numbers on them, like 1 Billion Reichsmark. (Thats 1.000.000.000.000!) And yet,

allegedly, people would need wheelbarrows full of those to buy a loaf of bread in those days. This may be slightly exaggerated, but is to show how fragile the value of paper money really is. And those things still happen today, as in Argentina, for example. You can cut off as many zeros as you like, convert a 1000 pesos to 1 peso, but youll have to repeat that procedure next month. Ive seen that happen, as Im sure, so have the residents of other countries. Even the value of the US Dollar has changed incredibly during my 4 decades on this planet. In 1984, the US Dollar bought more than 3,50 Deutschmarks. Then, a year later, there appeared a gigantic, whole page ad in one of the leading financial newspapers of Frankfurt, the economical Mecca or Wall Street of Germany, stating something like this, Gentlemen, this is it! Unless the US Dollar will be reduced to a maximum value of 1,58 Deutschmarks, the entire global economy will collapse.... And believe it or not, less than a year later, the dollar was down to 1,58 DM. I may be slightly off on the exact dates & values here, but that's the way I remember it. And then the Yen took a nose-dive sometime in the late 80s, wreaking havoc in Asia. The latest, interesting stunt performed with money on an international scale, was the introduction of the Euro in 2002, replacing the main gist of all former European currencies, including the Deutsch Mark & the French Franc, actually, pretty much all except for the British Pound. Switzerland is not a member of the EC, so, the Swiss Franc also still exists. The funny thing is, the Euro has a different value in each of its countries, as it buys more of certain things in Greece than in Paris or in Berlin. The not-so-funny thing is, that although the Euro was supposed to have resembled the value of the former currency in some way, for example, upon it's introduction, the Euro was roughly worth 2 Deutsch Marks, in reality, many items that used to cost 2 DMs now cost 2 Euros (in other words 4 DMs)! For some, this has meant greater gain, for most, greater loss. As one can observe on a global scale, the rich are getting richer all the time, while the poor are getting more numerous & poorer all the time, & there are plenty of statistics available on that statement I don't wanna bore you to death with. What's all that have to do with the "cashless society" & the "mark of the Beast" anyway? Well, the technology to replace money by an electronic chip implant is already available. All that stands between us & it's implementation is another global economical crises of the kind the world experienced in the 1930s, giving rise, perhaps, to another friendly chap, like Hitler, who will this time not only "solve the problems" of a single nation with promises of another "golden millenium" (Hitler claimed he was ushering in an empire to last 1000 years, "das tausendjhrige Reich"), but this time of the whole world, maybe even by abolishing cash (& a few other needless things, like religion, freedom, you name it), once & for all & introducing the wonderful, new, safe, cashless system! "Get marked today! & All your blues will melt away..." Sounds all very utopic & unreal to you right? After all, why should people accept this, as long as they can get down to the store on the corner & for a few bills buy whatever they want ? Well, but what if the money doesn't buy ? What if "the stores are all closed"? Buy "a stairway to heaven"? what if people will get so hungry, so desperate, they 're willing to do ANYTHING for a loaf of bread? Wouldn't you receive a mark or a tattoo or a computer chip that enables you to buy food again? Oh, but - don't forget to say "Thank You" to our wonderful new leader & pay respect to the "image" whatever that is going to be..... But as unfathomable as TVs, PCs & wireless phones were at the beginning of the 20th century, we've all got one now. So, I'm sure it will be only a matter of time until technology presents us the "most desirable object of all times in all the universe (remember "Time Bandits" ?): Some kind of multimedia device, permanently linked to a new & improved internet, enabling us to purchase or sell with our handy new tattoos & even making obsolete the former scourge of mankind: RELIGION. "As recently as 2003, fanatical Christian fundamentalist politicians, like the infamous last American president George W. Bush, used to threaten world peace..." A line from the history book of the New World Order?

So, what's the big deal then? Why does the Bible say all that? Is the Mark good or bad? I don't dig it! And what's the alternative? Is there any? Well, the alternative may be a little harder to accept than a tattoo for bread when you are starving. But the alternative once described itself as "the bread of life". Or "the light of the world", the "way, the truth & the life", "The Good Shepherd, who lays down his life for his sheep". "The Door to eternal life", "The Beginning & the End", "The Word of God", "which was made flesh & dwelt among us" as a carpenter's son, not a pompous politician. It says "He came unto his own, & his own received him not. But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: "Yeshua, the Messiah, aka Jesus the Christ. He came, willing to look like a loser, someone who claimed that God was his REAL father, for which statement he was betrayed into the hands of the authorities by the religious establishment of his day, tortured & executed. But the Bible says that He died innocent to pay for your sins & if you accept that, He can even feed & protect you through the times to come without having to accept the Mark of the Beast (about which it also says that those who receive it are cursed, Rev. 14:9-11). He fed thousands from a few loafs & fishes in the wilderness & promised his followers of then & today, that they would do greater works than he did. All one has to do is to accept his sacrifice for their sins on the cross & ask him into your heart. Everyone is here to make a choice. A choice between the Beast, and the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world (Rev.13:8). God had shown throughout history, from Cain & Abel, through Abraham & Isaac, on to Moses & the first Passover lambs in Egypt, up until the prophets what He was going to do: Cast our sins on Him, that through Him we might live - even through the toughest time in all of world history.

Only Idiots Get Bored According to Richard Rohr, one of my favorite writers, the word "idiot," originating in the Greek language, defines someone so wrapped up in himself that they're oblivious to all that's going on around them. Everything revolves around themselves... Sounds a lot like folks you and I have met, and maybe have been, at times, doesn't it? But to associate boredom with idiocy is a school of thought from one of the most beautiful heads to ever have adorned a movie screen. A few years ago, when I was still watching TV, I caught Salma Hayek (the gorgeous Latin actress featured in "Fools Rush In" and others flicks...) on Oprah. And she proudly proclaimed there before the whole world that her mother always taught her that only idiots get bored. That was a philosophy worthy of adopting for my own, because I could only wholeheartedly agree. It's so true because there's so much to do if one only looks around, that one really has to be an idiot, stuck on himself & oblivious of the world around them, in order to get bored. The sad thing is that there are a lot of things folks won't "feel like" doing, & they get bored because they limit the options to only things that minister to their own egos, preferably some fun activity requiring the least effort of their own, something to consume... gimme, gimme, gimme! Sounds familiar? You've probably seen or experienced what I'm talking about. Now, how do you change that? How do you teach yourself or someone else not to be a disgusting, spoiled, pampered & selfish brat, and to look out at the world instead, to behold the multitudes of things you could possibly do - not necessarily for yourself, but for someone else?

One thing I found out that helps is to first of all reduce the input that only feeds the selfish glutton in us even more. For example, stop watching and imitating selfish idiots on TV! I stopped watching TV 4 months after 9/11 (2001), because that's when I realized you couldn't even believe the news anymore, so why keep torturing myself & zapping myself into a coma until 4 A.M.? It's been 2 1/2 years since then, and I've gradually come back to life again. Also, take my advice, folks, if you want to stop feeling bad about not getting anything rigged up, stop smoking weed. The art is not committing yourself into any artificially induced stupor and still not get bored! So, once you have managed to change your focus - away from those zombies on TV, away from yourself, and you start looking around for things you can do, either just because they ought to get done, or because you know someone else will be happy about it, you'll see that boredom will be a thing of the past. You'll just have to determine you're going to stop being a pampered little "king," "queen," "prince" or "princess" & learn a little from the King of kings, Who gave the perfect example of how to be really great by serving others. Right. Not being a bored idiot also includes putting your pride on the backburner. To some people, who haven't yet caught the drift, pride is still some kind of virtue, but if pride is a virtue, it's about as useful as a brain tumor... But that's a whole nuther subject I might perhaps expound on some other time... In the meantime, take it to heart, people, ban the line, "I'm bored" from your vocabulary, or at least be honest enough to openly label yourself "idiot." If you don't take it from me, take it from one of the most gorgeous women on the planet. Salma, you tops!

YES!
The question "Would you like to ask Jesus to come into your heart?" is a magical combination of words, which - regardless of whether the one being asked the question understands the meaning of it or not will determine (by the corresponding reply to it) where the addressee will spend eternity - or at least some part of it. Those who are children of God - ordained & chosen to be thus before the foundations of the world - will invariably respond "yes" to this question when asked, even if for no apparent conscious reason, even in the absence of any sense that it might make to them. Those whose response will be "no," will always reveal by the course of their actions, behavior and whole being in the years to follow, that they have chosen another path, not the heavenly. Some people are given repeated chances to reply to this probably most fateful of all questions, and if they hadn't chosen to say "yes," and pray to receive Jesus as their Savior the first time around, they might do so the second, third or final time. Some have even answered "yes" repeatedly & "done it" a few times, perhaps just to be on the safe side, or simply because they didn't think much of it the first time around. Sometimes the result isn't any visible change, and there are people who will doubt whether such a person has been genuinely saved. While I personally am inclined to believe that anyone is saved "who confesses with their mouth the Lord Jesus and believes in their heart" (Rom.10:9,10) in the original sense of the word "believing" as "drinking in, receiving" (see also John 1:12), even if only for that one brief moment in their life, some may argue about this. But it seems to be undeniably clear that those who reject the offer to

receive Jesus will always prove by their lives that in choosing not to receive Christ, they have chosen the other side. When I was asked "Would you like to pray with us to receive Jesus in your heart" (the 2nd time around), those words didn't make any sense to me, but something inside me made me say "yes," for no explicable reason, other than that my heart knew that I wanted to become a child of God, and must somehow have been one already. Those who asked me, joyfully responded, "Oh, would you like to pray for Jesus to come into your heart right now?" And I did. Sometimes, ever since that day in 1976 (I was 13 then) I fell back into ungodly behavior, and it was definitely not as if all my problems were solved on that day or I had suddenly become perfect. But ever since then, every fall & every mistake I made seems to have been a fall upward, one step closer toward the Throne of God's Grace. A short while later, my sister Barbara also prayed the same prayer, and although it seemed to have some immediate effect on her, negative experiences that followed in her life later (and the choices she made accordingly), didn't allow her to continue to cherish the joy of her Salvation, and she eventually turned into what I would call a "mental unbeliever." She doesn't allow her mind to believe in God because she cannot explain some of the experiences she's had - but she's basically what you might call a "good" person. A few years later my half-sister, Ariane was born, and although her mother believed in God, Ariane seemed to be cut of a different type of wood. When my eldest daughter was around 4 or 5 years old, she asked Ariane (who was still a child of about 10 back then) whether she would like to pray to receive Jesus in her heart, Ariane's reply was a very determined, almost disgusted "NO!" It was obvious she didn't want to. As the years went by, she has proven by her actions and her entire vile being & anti-social behavior, on which side she was standing all along; and while there is still hope that she might yet get saved, at the point in time I am writing this, it is obvious that she has not yet chosen to become a child of God, & one would almost be surprised to see her change her mind. Some people believe that a visible change & "metanoya" has to take place before someone gets saved. I personally believe in John 1:12, "As many as received Him (Jesus), to them gave He power to become sons of God," and it is the act of receiving Jesus that will result in a metanoya, or change, although one has to be willing to pray for the forgiveness of their sins as they pray the Salvation prayer. But it is the prayer that triggers the metanoya. It's like the seed of Salvation that is sown into the heart of the one who opens their door to Jesus, and it might only sprout & grow into a new life years later, sometimes not at all in this life, but I do believe in the Lord's mercy and saving grace to the extent that no matter what a person may have done who sincerely prayed this prayer, they will go to Heaven when they die. When the Family started receiving messages from famous deceased people, I personally was very surprised that among the many messages from prominent dead people in Heaven, there was also a message from Richard Nixon, who had always been perceived as an extremely vile person by our community, and had even been compared to Hitler during our earlier years by our founder. Yet Nixon explained in his message from beyond that the single best thing he had done during his earthly life was to pray to receive Jesus in his heart during a Sunday school class in his childhood, and that was the one thing that got him into Heaven. I personally believe that message. Otherwise there wouldn't be much sense in Jesus asking us over and over again to win souls for Him. If it wouldn't be easy enough for a child to receive Salvation, as He Himself states in the gospels (Mt.18:3), and if getting saved would be some complicated process, then it would make no sense, and much of our labor would be totally in vain. Our labor in winning souls is based on the simplicity of the Gospel, and the simple fact that any child can receive Salvation. Some believe that children are "already saved" & somehow lose their innocence at a certain age. I prefer to believe the Bible, that we're "born in sin," and that we must be "born again" in order to "see the Kingdom of Heaven," as Jesus explained to Nicodemus in John 3. This is a simplicity that often eludes the learned, and is way past their comprehension and beyond the grasp of their complex minds, but not beyond a little child's faith, just big enough to answer "yes" to the question, "Would you like to receive Jesus in your heart?"

Bible Verses Most Christians Choose To Ignore

There are in the Bible a certain number of verses, which have been dismissed by the majority of Christians throughout centuries as "outdated," "not relevant" or "not possible or practicable" anymore, because those only applied to Jesus and His immediate followers, and were only relevant for His day. But since 1969, those voices have been proven as wrong, because that year a movement came into being that was so dedicated to the cause of Christ that they could do no other but prove that every bit of Jesus' instructions that He gave to His disciples of all ages were just as applicable today as ever. It's just that the majority of Christians wouldn't even be willing to consider to do so. Jesus' Job for every Christian In Mark 16:15 Jesus gives His disciples (= followers of the teaching) His great commission, the task which every sincere Christian should feel called to fulfill: "Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature." Now, it's true that this commission has been obeyed and followed by a great number of men and women throughout the centuries. We call those men and women missionaries or evangelists. I wouldn't consider most preachers & church pastors to fall into that category, because they're not obeying the part about "going into all the world" in order to preach the gospel to every creature. All they do - as far as I can tell - is to preach to the same congregation one hour per week for a looong time. I wouldn't consider that doing a job. How much would anyone expect to be paid for a job he only shows up one hour a week to do? Forsaking All Of course, it couldn't be expected of poor pastors & preachers to have to be leaving their towns, homes and congregations in order to "preach the gospel to every creature in all the world," could it? That would mean, he would have to leave everything behind. He couldn't take his house, his family (if he isn't catholic and has one) along with him, his furniture, his car, his possessions... that's impossible. Perhaps that's precisely why Jesus said in Luke 14:33, "So likewise, whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be My disciple." In other words, anyone who has not left behind everything he owns in order to fulfill Jesus' commission is not His disciple. He may claim to be one, he may pretend to be one, he may even be paid to be one, but by the definition of Jesus Himself - and I would consider that a higher authority than the Pope himself, he simply is not. In Matthew 19:29 Jesus expounds on that point a little more, when He says, "And every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my names sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life." Here he gives us a list of not only things He would expect us to forsake in order to follow Him and be His disciple, but even people, relatives, yes, even children He expects us to leave behind. And just to make sure we know He's really serious about it, in Matthew 10:27 He says, "He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me." In Matthew 8:22 we find another of those "most unpopular and politically incorrect of Christ's teachings" where he denies a man who wants to follow Him his wish to first bury his father: "Follow Me; and let the dead bury their dead."

In the light of the fact that Jesus' public ministry only lasted 3 years, it becomes plain that He didn't have an awful lot of time to spread His message, nor to wait for this man to bury his father (who perhaps hadn't even died yet.) But let's be honest: how many of us give similar excuses for not doing our job & following Christ's commission? What Jesus does, though, with His Words is disarm us, He takes any excuses from us: Let the dead bury the dead. If you're one of the live ones, one of those called and chosen to bring eternal life to a world of death and darkness, then do it, no matter what, but don't pretend you're something you're not! God's Financial Plan One of the most popular arguments why people shouldn't or couldn't possibly be expected to "live like that" nowadays, is "because it wouldn't work." Yes, it does! We see from the Book of Acts (in the Bible, right after the 4 Gospels) that it worked for the Early Christians, and since 1969, it has also worked for thousands of members of the Family International. Some say that Karl Marx even stole his idea of Communism from the pattern after which Jesus' early followers lived, as described in Acts 2:44,45: "And all that believed were together, and had all things common; And sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need." Here we find something which Jesus had already said earlier in the gospels, to a certain rich young man, who wanted to find out what good thing he was still lacking, since he was already so good, but obviously still not happy. Jesus told him, "if you want a treasure in heaven, sell everything you have, give it to the poor, & follow Me." Unfortunately, the young man didn't have it within him to do that, but in Acts we read of at least 8000 people who did. Just in order to avoid any misunderstanding about the Early church living in a way any Communist could only dream about, the pattern is confirmed once again in Acts 4:32-35, and the seriousness about it clearly illustrated in the story of Ananias & Sapphira following. There have been other true, sincere and fully dedicated followers of Christ throughout the centuries who got the point that it was part of true Christianity to give up physical possessions in order to serve Christ, such as St.Francis of Assisi, who stripped completely bare before the Bishop and the entire city to illustrate what he considered to be a true follower of Christ, contrary to the common concept of "Christianity" of his day. After all, Jesus had made it quite clear in His sermon of the mount, where He said in Matthew 6:24,25 "Ye cannot serve God and mammon (wealth). Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?" A few verses later He explains that if we just make God's affairs our priority, then He would doubtlessly care for our needs (see verse 33). Paul, in his epistles to the Romans, chapter 9, verse 14 makes it clear that Preaching the gospel was not only the job every follower of Christ was given to do, but that this job would also pay for itself: "Even so hath the Lord ordained that they which preach the gospel should live of the gospel." The life-style of the Family International has schown for nearly 40 years that "living of the gospel" and living communally, the way the Early Christians did, is quite possible, even in this day and age. Persecution Unfortunately, whenever there has been someone exposing the hypocrisy of phoney believers or religionists by their sincerity, it has evoked jealousy and brought the wrath of the hypocrites

upon the true believers, from Cain & Abel over Jesus and the Pharisees until today. After all, what was written for the believers of the past must also be valid for those of today, even if it's something as shocking as 2.Timothy 3:12: "Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution." In other words, any group of Christians not suffering persecution must not be doing the job! Jesus confirms this in His sermon of the mount, which was actually not - as traditionally shown in the movies - given to a large multitude of people, but only to His disciples (see Mt.5:1), where He says in Matthew 5:10-12, "Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you." Luke even goes as far as quoting Jesus in his version of the same sermon as having said, "Woe when all men speak well of you." In other words, popularity is not really a proof of being on the job for God. Hot or Cold? Popular theories were not really Jesus' thing. Whenever something is really popular, you can almost be sure there's something fishy aboout it. Bestseller-Writer Dan Brown has the audacoty to base his theory that Jesus was married on the ridiculously weak argument that it was the "proper thing to do" for a Jewish man of Jesus' times to be married. He obviously missed the entire point about Jesus, His message, His life & purpose, and what He as all about. Jesus wasn't into doing the proper thing. Instead of starting His own little family like everybody else, He might have been accused of breaking up other people's families. We know for certain from the Gospels that Peter was married, so there's one family Jesus undoubtedly "broke up." And we know of at least 11 other sons whom He "stole" from their families, as some might put it, one of which tragically took his own life. But it's not just my own interpretation of Jesus' life-style, but His own Words that "outed" Him as an incorrigibly controversial iconoclast and non-conformist. In a Old Testament prophecy about Jesus, He is called the "Prince of Peace," and in John's Gospel Jesus tells us that He would give His disciples His peace, but He was not talking about any kind of peaceful co-existence with the evils of this world, which He makes quite plain in Matthew 10:34,35: "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law." In later passages of the Bible we find more references to the sword Jesus brought, the sword of His Word, which would determine between right and wrong and make manifest our true motivations (see Hebrews 4:12), and Paul lists further parts of our spiritual armor in Ephesians 6:10-18, which we need as "soldiers for Christ" to fight our "spiritual warfare." This reminds us of the "Lord of Hosts," one of the names for God in the Old Testament, and we find Him again in Revelation 19:14, namely Jesus, leading the armies of heaven in the Battle of Armaggeddon, in which He will destroy the Antichrist with the sword of His mouth. So, Jesus, unlike common perception of Him, is not necessarily a pacifist. He's a radical, white-hot Revolutionary and fighter for the truth against the flood of lies we encounter in our System. The question is whether we'll put ourselves on His side and allow Him to destroy our on false concepts or not. Often we try to retain a little comfortable piece of the lie in our life-style, along

with the truth we find in the gospel, but this type of compromise is vehemently condemned by Him. In Revelation 3:15,15 we find Him dealing with the compromising church of Laodicea: "I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew thee out of My mouth." What is Truth? In the gospels we find Jesus warning us repeatedly of "the leaven of the Scribes & Pharisees," apparently parts of their doctrine that are not according to the truth as He perceived it. Unfortunately, that kind of "leaven" or compromise has crept into the Christian church from its beginnings. One of the most blatant violations of the new, free and radical life of Early Christianity as the world had seen it for the first 2 centuries (not without having the church pay the price of incessant persecution and thousands of martyrs), was obviously committed when the Christian faith was finally officially embraced by the Roman government in the 3rd century, and formerly Pagan temples were converted to Christian "churches." The word church originally comes from the Greek "Ecclesia," meaning, "the called out ones," whereas from now on, a "church" was nothing more than what it means to most of us today: a building. In one of the most fiery sermons the world ever heard, resulting in its author's immediate death as a martyr by the hands of his audience, Stephen said, "Howbeit the most High dwelleth not in temples made with hands" (Acts 7:48). The house God wants to build is one of living stones, as Paul confirms (1.Cor.3:16), consisting of His followers. Yet instead, we are the ones who try to pack Him up inside some kind of a building, as if we were able to put Him in a box. We want to make God our possession, instead of allowing ourselves to be His possessions and do with us what He likes. Our job is to go into all the world and preach His gospel, not to wait inside some building for anyone to come in who might want to be preached at!

God Stopped Talking?

Maybe you've seen the excellent 80s movie "Oh God, Part II" with George Burns, in which he plays God recruiting a little girl to start an advertisement campaign for Him. She even winds up being expelled from school for having the audacity to claim that God actually talks to her, but manages to persuade her fellow-students to join her in a world-wide "Think God!" campaign... Well, it's a little bit like that, although perhaps not always quite as Hollywoodish (in fact, it's been a common theme for the Lord, during our convertations, to expound on how much better real life is than Hollywood). He does talk a lot about getting His message across to the world, which, after all, is supposedly a Christian's (or let's say true believer's) full-time job, and I've got tons of pages of instructions from Him on how to do a better job at that, a lot of which you'll find reflected in my songs (for more on getting the job done for God, see my treatize on "Bible verses most Christians ignore"). But then He also tells me to do crazy little things, like earlier this year, when He told me that I should let my wife drive more often, rather than always insisting on driving myself & getting upset & impatient with other drivers on the road. He said it's good for my humility level (which by the way, did you know - is synonymous with love?), and the level of trust in our relationship, not to mention the way it has reduced the amount of inappropriate language coming from my lips! One thing I want to clarify is that the reason why I'm telling the world (= you) that God talks to me is not to show off what a spiritual dude I am, but to encourage you to let Him to talk to you, too! It's wonderfully beneficial, and a whole new way of life once you fulfill life's purpose by living according to the tune of your very Creator. I must give credit where credit is due, though, and admit here that it was by no means my own idea that I should do that, but it's just an important part of our Family's way of life and practices, (as so wonderfully described by Gary Shepherd, who has been studying our group among others), which had been stressed by our late founder, David Berg (or "Dad," for short) for decades before I ever got the point. He said, "The most important thing each new generation has to learn is to hear from God, personally, for themselves, and get His instructions directly from Him, daily...." Well, something to that extent, anyway. And I've got to thank his wife and current leader of our Family, Maria, for making this "hearing from God" a part of our daily reality by stressing it as one of the most important habits in our lives, comparable to the importance of eating, brushing your teeth or taking a shower... Another thing He (the Lord) has been stressing, and urging me to pass on to others is the fact that He needs you. Often I forget the things He tells me, so I've made it a habit to condense my converstations with Him, have the condos printed out and go over them, which recently led me across a heavenly message from about a year ago, resulting in the song "God Needs You," which I'll hopefully be able to record soon & post in my songs folder for you to download. This message was slightly touched on in the movie "Oh God, Pt.2" as well, but the fact can't be stressed enough that God actually needs us. He needs us to love Him (which means to first allow Him to love us), and that includes just about all the things you do with a flesh & blood person you love: you talk to Him, listen to Him, you think of Him, you tell others about Him...

It all depends on how real you believe He is. Most people have no problems talking to Him (which they call prayer), but as Dad used to say, "Prayer is not just speaking your piece, but letting God speak His, too." Unfortunately, the churches (and the teaching of Evolution) have made God look so distant from us, that not everybody has the faith for an intimate, personal relationship with Him. By referring to "Him", by the way, I'm mostly referring to Jesus, the "mediator between God and men" as the Bible says (1.Timothy 2:5), and you can get about just as intimate with Him, as you like, because, after all, He calls those who believe in Him His bride... (See Matthew 25:6; Revelation 18:23, 21:9 & 22:17). Oh, and one other thing: He can talk to you through just about anyone or anything! He can talk to you through another person (even one you hardly know, or don't like, and it doesn't have to be the Pope, either), through a song, through a movie, through a book, you've just got to be open enough. After all, the Devil screams at us all day, through hundreds of different outlets, why not give God a chance to speak His piece to you as well, so you can decide which is the better voice to follow? The safest place to find His voice, naturally, is His Word, the Bible, but don't let anybody kid you that He stopped talking 2000 years ago. Have a listen & find out what He's got to say to you today. Do me and Him, and especially yourself the favor!

The Snake on the Pole: Remember the Culprit

Recently, through my communications with "the Man on the Top," I got a little revelation about the symbolism of the snake on a pole, which God commanded Moses to make for the people of Israel to get healed of their snake bites (Numbers 21:8,9), since God had sent a plague of snakes into their camp as a punishment for their murmuring about manna. It had never made sense to me before, why, of all things, God used a serpent as an image of healing. Why were they supposed to look at a serpent, a symbol of he very cause of their suffering?

I was familiar with the scripture John 3:14, where Jesus says, "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up," referring to and prophesying His crucifixion. Was that supposed to make the serpent look holy, like Jesus, or something? Maybe that's why that symbol is still a pharmaceutical symbol today... Recently, the Lord solved some personal problems in my life by exposing the weaknesses that caused it, and He drove home the point that exposing the Devil's tactic, or the sin he was using as an inroad into our life, was a key to find the solution to the problem. There is also great power in addressing demons and other evils by name, as we find out from the Gospels and the Book of Acts, where we find Jesus and the apostles demanding from demons to tell them their names. The Lord repeatedly was referring to exposing the Enemy's scheme, saying "you've got his number," & that was a secret to getting the victory over the particular battle in our lives. Back to Moses' snake: the snake stands for sin, evil, and the Devil himself; so how could anyone obtain healing by looking at a snake symbol? Well, my guess is, by remembering who's behind it all, making him responsible for it, and remembering that God is much greater than he, & can handle anything the Devil tries to pull on us. One of the great advantages of the Devil is camouflage, to work under "shady cloaks of lies," as one of my songs will tell you, and he doesn't like it at all to be exposed! (The same applies, by the way, to his earthly followers, whose secret of success has been their secrecy). So, pulling away the cloak & calling the problem, the sin, the evil by name, is an important first step of healing: one of the few requirements of finding Salvation is to know we're sinners & need a Savior. Even so, in order to be healed of either physical or spiritual diseases, we need to realize we're sick and need a doctor. That's why Jesus said, "the healthy don't need a doctor, only the sick. I have come to call sinners to repentance." In reality, there are only sick people, or those who need spiritual healing, but there are those who think they don't need it. In fact, since modern man thinks he's more clever , more "developed" and sophisticated than ever, it's even harder for him to see his need for healing or Salvation - at least this applies to those who fall for the facade. Others can look beyond it & call the problems by names, and these are the spiritually healthy people I've met. The first step in order to get healed of any disease is to receive a diagnose from a doctor. Once you know what you've got, there are chances you can be healed. And that's the way it is important to find the cause for our other problems as well. The difficulty nowadays is, many of the sources of our problems are so well hidden, it's hard to find out what's causing them. First of all, the Devil has managed to trick many people into believing that he doesn't even exist (which someone has attributed to be one of his greatest feats), and accordingly, there are no such things as demons or spiritual sources of problems or evil in the world. Well, my personal interpretation of Moses' snake on the pole is this: the message is, "Remember the culprit!" Evil didn't come into this world by itself, not by chance, as the Bible says, " As the bird by wandering, as the swallow by flying, so the curse causeless shall not come" (Prov. 26:2). Some time ago, I found out on the Internet that there is such a thing as a first and second "Book of Adam & Eve." Out of curiosity (because who wouldn't want to know more about Adam &

Eve?), I read them. I can't say whether they're authentic, but personally, I'd say they're just as authentic as "The Book Of Enoch," which evidently was still considered holy scripture during the first centuries, since we find it quoted by Jude (see Jude 14,15), and I'd say there is a possibility that they were written by Enoch as well. Regardless of their origins, though, these books show to what lengths the Devil goes in order to deceive the children of men! He comes up with all kinds of schemes, disguises and deceits to fool poor Adam, and the first steps toward improvement finally take place once Adam realizes who's behind all the weird things that happen to him. Now, I'm not one in favor of given the Devil overdue credit. But I know that if there's something bad happening in your life, then there's a cause and a reason for it. So, in order to find a solution, it sure helps to find the cause, otherwise you may just temporarily cure the symptoms, but keep running into the same problems over & over. In the "Books Of Adam & Eve" it was the Lord Himself Who revealed to Adam who was behind his troubles, and I found out that He is willing to do the same for any of us today. If you've got some trouble or something bad in your life, ask God to show you both, the cause and the solution, and He will. You'll get smarter by the day once you know how the Enemy of your soul operates in order to fool you, and before you know it, you won't fall into the same traps & won't be making those same mistakes again! I thought I was finished, but there's more. One of the main type of problems we are having to tackle on a daily basis, are the problems we're having with others: from the person closest to us, our spouse or children, who can annoy us with any silly but innocent quirk or remark, the neighbors, the other drivers on the streets to the declared enemies of our nations, whoever it happens to be that our government is siding against. If we just accept our anger, our hatred, our aggressions as "part of ourselves," then there's probably not much hope we'll ever find an end to our bickerings, quarrels, fights, arguments and wars. But could it be that those aggressions are instigated & artificially hyped up by a third party who would greatly profit from that disunity with our loved ones, or - on a political level - that war with our enemies? You bet! "Divide & conquer" has always been the Devil's own slogan, and until you realize that your aggressiveness and anger are the problem, and not that particular quirk that's getting you so upset, you'll be caught in a perpetual treadmill. I've learned something very valuable today, from something I read in one of our Family's publications, and that is that you can choose not to be bothered by it! You can choose to fight the real culprits, namely either the demonic forces who are blowing your fellowmen's flaws up way out of proportion in your view, or the hidden human forces who are arming both sides of your governments wars to the teeth, highly profiting from your confrontation, as they have for centuries! You can choose to say, "no, I'm not going to allow this to get me angry!" You can choose to believe in the fact instead, that God knew what He was doing when he made that other person (or culture) you can't seem to get along with, and praise and thank Him for their positive qualities! What it all boils down to again is love, the most important thing & only thing that matters. Part of that love is forgiveness, which I've lately come to realize as something far more important than I previously thought, and that's where Jesus on the cross comes in again: What does Jesus on the cross stand for in one word? Forgiveness! Look at the cross and know you're forgiven, unconditionally. The price for your sins has been paid if you will only accept this gift.

And then remember that this same gift of forgiveness applies to your neighbor - or whoever you have a quarrel with, too. Look at the serpent on the pole in order to remember there's a culprit: the very sin in your own heart, which the Enemy of your soul will work hard to make fester and flourish, like weeds in your garden or a malignant tumor. Then look at Jesus on the cross and see the solution: salvation, healing and forgiveness for both, yourself and anyone else who will receive it.

The Evolution Matrix

I've recently mentioned how God uses all kinds of people and things to communicate with us, including movies. Movies are one of my favorite subjects, because I've really learned a lot of lessons in my life out of a few good ones, or got some real kicks out of some, which either encouraged my in my beliefs or opened my eyes to a different angle of seeing things. Probably one of the movies with the greatest impact on my life was the "Matrix." I'll explain to you why. I believe there is more to the plot of that movie in relation to our reality than even the makers of the trilogy were aware of. I believe that we, the human race are being fed a certain program, which is based on a lie, creating for each of us a view of the world that is in many ways false, thus altering each of our behavior to a certain extent - with some more than others, until we choose to become "unplugged" from it. Bluntly, you might say, we're being brainwashed. We're being manipulated to see things in a way they really aren't. But why and by whom, you wonder. No, not the machines, although they're being very useful in the process, and without them, it wouldn't have been nearly as easy. The basis of the Big Lie, or the Matrix we're being fed - from the time you're old enough to watch TV, which strongly alters and influences the way we perceive the world and everything around us, is the paradigm of Evolution. I'm not talking about the process of micro-evolution, which Darwin discovered with his finches on Galapagos, the adaptations & changes within species, but the paradigm which evolved out of it, namely that everything is supposed to have developed from nothing through that process. Everyday we're being told in the media (and our kids in their schools, kindergartens and science books) that Evolution is a proven fact, when nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, the only basis on which the not-even-a-theory (for theories are conclusions drawn from actual observations) of Evolution is the sheer amounts of money pumped into the brainwashing program and the repetitious way it's being drilled into our heads. No matter how big a lie is, if you repeat it often enough, state often enough that it's a fact, and present fake "evidence" for it often enough, after time, the majority of people will believe it. But what's supposed to be so bad about Evolution, you wonder? After all, millions of people live happily believing in it, so what's the paranoia all about? Are they? The Evolutionary paradigm indicates that we all stem from an accidental explosion ("Big Bang"), which happened billions of years ago, and by an innumerable series of inexplicable miraculous coincidences brought forth the perfectly working universe, our solar system, along with our planet and all life on it. There is no need for a designer or God, and even if you insist on having

one, He is as distant from us a the billions of years since which He is supposed to have initiated that process. If there is a God Who started the process of Evolution, His message is: "You are nothing and nobody, just a random side product of a process I happened to initiate billions of years ago." The result of using this view of our origins is largely that it doesn't really matter who I am, nor what I do. If I happen to be born into a family of higher status, then of course I will keep the rules of the game in order to preserve my status, but if I am not, I might as well kill, steal, or commit any other crime in order to get what the others have. "The survival of the fittest" is the name of the game, and "God," or whichever force of nature which initiated this game favors those who know how to defend themselves, especially those smart enough to enrich themselves on behalf of the less fortunate, since I - (as a member of the favored race or species) - can just grab their natural resources away from them at the barrel of a gun. My mental picture of justice is: the stronger one is always in the right. The more weapons I have, the righter I am. Thus I'll be creating victims all around me, but such is the course of evolution, the stronger thriving on the dead bodies of the "unselected." But what if, instead of the earth and all of us on it being a side-product of billions of years of evolution, the Biblical account of creation is actually true, namely that God, not more than 6.200 years ago created the heavens (space and our atmosphere) and the earth (as His future Head Quarters - see Revelation chapter 21), and the rest of the stars & planets 3 days later? In other words, the origin of all things, including you and me, could be traced back to a precise moment in time, not at all so very long ago? Wouldn't this up your chances that God actually cares about you, & that He is personally involved a lot more closely with everything that's going on down here, on this relatively young earth (compared to what we've been told), and that indeed, there might be a divine plan in all this apparent chaos of wars, crimes and injustice? But if that's true, then who are the forces who are making sure that we believe the Lie, and why do they insist on keeping telling us that lie over and over again? What's in it for them? Well, as you may have noticed, and the biblical account of our origins confirms, God has allowed evil to enter our world in the form of one of His fallen angels, who dragged a whole bunch of fallen angels with him, and one of his favorite pastimes is deceiving and fooling people. He also wants to be the boss and rule the world himself, and he's working on establishing his final and ultimate kingdom on earth, in which he - incarnate in the body of a man (just like Jesus was God in human flesh), and he has been using people to get a hang of it all along. Satan - or Lucifer - has been worshiped by many cultures under different names, starting off with the Egyptian culture, in which he starred as the sun god Ra, and many other "deities" (demons), which, believe it or not, are still - often unknowingly - being worshiped by the rulers of today's world and their subjects, and just as the Egyptians subdues the rest of the world as slaves, that's what today's rulers would also like to make out of the rest of us (and have to a large extent already achieved to do so). And that's where the picture of the Matrix comes in again. Yes, ladies & gentlemen, you're all slaves & "batteries" to feed the big machine of the kingdom of Satan on earth, unless you decide to become "unplugged" and join the "resistance" and choose to actively fight against the "guardians of the Matrix" in order to get others to choose the "red pill" of truth and become "unplugged" ("drop out" of the System). You may have never heard of the possibility to "drop out" of the System, just as Neo or others in the Matrix weren't aware the possibility to become "unplugged," until they were presented with the choice. Remember, when he was finally shown by Morpheus what the Matrix really was,

namely nothing but a big lie and deception, he actually became so sick physically that he had to throw up, and at first he refused to believe it. That's the way I felt the first time I read the Book Of Revelation. But after a while he knew he had no other choice but to fight for the truth. The neat thing about our reality, which isn't shown in the "Matrix" trilogy, is that there's actually a greater layer of God's reality or "Big Picture" around the matrix, and that He's ultimately in total control. He is the Source of all life and strength, including the supernatural strength you need in order to fight against the agents of the Matrix. It's another case of little Davids fighting a whole mob of gigantic goliaths, but guess who's going to win? Because "the survival of the fittest" is not God's scheme, He actually delights in debunking such ridiculous hogwash originating from the "father of lies" (John 8:44), and often rigging things up for the weaker ones to win. "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth!" Not the dinosaurs, nor the Pharaohs of Egypt, nor the Cesars of Rome, nor the financial titans of today inherit the earth, but the meek followers of a humble son of a carpenter who sacrificed Himself in order to save the world. Which version of the story do you choose? Which pill will you take? "Remember, all I can offer you is the truth!" P.S.: For those of you who don't feel exactly called and cut out for a life as a resistance fighter against the Matrix Neo-style, but still would prefer to believe the truth, be comforted to know that there were also those who were actively helping the Resistance from inside the Matrix. The most important thing you can do is to receive Jesus, & He'll show you what you can do to help further His cause on earth, and His Holy Spirit, Who will guide you into all truth (John 16:13). The greatest power on earth is not obtained by robbing others of their resources or lives, nor by acquiring worldly riches and power, but by simply humbling yourself into the position of a little child and asking for it!

My Friend Jonah

I have a soft spot for Jonah, the biblical prophet who, upon being sent by God to the Assyrian Capital of Nineveh to preach its doom, boarded a ship in the opposite direction instead, was on his own urge - thrown overboard in a storm, swallowed by a large sea creature (presumably a sperm whale) & spewed out by the same 3 days later to finally fulfill his God-given mission in Nineveh. Maybe one reason I like him is because according to Richard Rohr and Andreas Ebert, Jonah is the biblical "patron saint" of the Enneagram personality type NINE, the type I can personally identify myself with best. My "better half," Sparkles talked to someone about Jonah today, and she said she's always amazed about how little people actually know about him (as well as the rest of the Bible). Even Ebert & Rohr seem to dismiss Jonah's story as a fable in the foot notes to their book, but a little bit of research would render such an attitude as ignorant, to say the least. I suppose church Christians simply have to "unlearn" too much stuff they were taught in their cemeteries er, seminaries - about how and why all the miracles in the Bible didn't really happen... If you type in the word "Nineveh" in Google, probably the first place you'll wind up will be Wikipedia, an excellent online encyclopedia created by Internet users around the world & a sheer endless source of information. You'll even be given the exact geographical coordinates there, which will zoom you right into a satellite shot of the archeological site of that ancient city, next to the city of Mosul, in the province of Ninawa in Iraq, a place where Iraqi insurgents moved after the infamous Battle of Fallujah in 2004. Nineveh's location is marked by two large mounds, one of which is called Nab Ynus, which means "Prophet Jonah," and on which a muslim shrine in honor of the Jewish prophet stands. (If you think that's ridiculous, you should read the Quran, which reveres many Hebrew characters, including Jesus, Abraham, Isaac, and of course Ishmael, etc.) You'll even find reports of Christians in the region who observe an old traditional fast, based on the fast and repentance of Jonah's Ninevites, which led to their redemption. God simply changed His mind & decided not to destroy them (- yet! -), much to Jonah's dismay, as you can find in the Bible. - Or accounts of an ancient Babylonian historian/priest named Berosus who wrote of a mythical creature named Oannes who was to have emerged from the sea to give divine wisdom to men. "Oannes" being one possible way to spell "Jonah" in the ancient Greek

Berosus used. There is even an extensive treatise on Jonah's Whale, mentioning 2 other occasions in the 18th century in which men are recorded to have survived being swallowed by a whale. Finally, you get to the sad truth about what's happening at this historically significant site right now, with the remainders of the archaeological evidence of the Biblical accounts of Ninevehs king Sennacherib (as found in 2.Kings chapter 18 & 19) being carried off by looters & thieves, thanks to the chaos the "almighty" U.S. of A. are wreaking in that misfortunate country, along with the United Nations. Probably all this evidence for the accuracy of the Bible must have really been a thorn in the flesh of the New World Order. If there's one thing we learn from history, it's that we never learn from it, Toynbee said, and thus we see yesterday's Davids turn into today's Goliaths, and modern world empires heinously steal the last remains of former ones, only to meet the same doom as the former. David Berg and his Children of God predicted the destruction of America in a "40 Days" warning in 1973, but nothing happened. I believe that God was as merciful to the Americans as He had been to the Ninevites 2700 years earlier. But eventually, Nineveh was destroyed. Another prophet, Nahum, was sent, and in 612 B.C. the Babylonians and Medes raked that great city to the ground. In the light of what I know about what's going on in the U.S.A. today I can only assume that the later Ninevites must have deserved the judgments just as today's corrupt leaders will.

Gettin' In Tune: Look Again!

I believe in a personal God. And I mean real personal. As personal as you can get! Everything He has created in the physical realm is a symbol, a typification and illustration of some greater spiritual truth behind it, (as David Berg taught). He has created parents to illustrate His parenthood toward us, His beloved (however wayward) children, and He has even created the intimate loving relationship between a woman and a man - marriage - to illustrate the ideal relationship between Christ and His Bride. What does that mean? Basically: No secrets! There is nothing hidden that shall not be revealed, as it is written, anyway, so why kid yourself & pretend you can hide anything from Him? And if you realize you can't, or that it's senseless to try, you might as well communicate with Him about the innermost matters of your heart. I wouldn't be wasting my breath & any potential reader's time going on about this forever if I hadn't found out first hand that this really works, just as I found out that tiger balm works to prevent sore throats or artichoke to prevent liver trouble. Communication with God prevents soul trouble, & it can prevent a whole lot of other trouble as well, & there's an endless amount of things you can learn in the course of your conversations with Him. One of the latest prescriptions I got from "Dr. J." was along the lines of intensified communication within a marriage relationship. Did you know that you can "tune in" to a person? The Rock band "The Who" sang about it on their best ever album "Who's Next" from '71, "Gettin' In Tune." I grew up on that album, which had been my dad's, & I always wondered what it was about that song that got me. 30 years later my Creator tells me that it's because it talks about a concept that really works.

You can get in tune with a person close to you, similar to the way you can get in tune with God & His Holy Spirit. The only difference being that God's Spirit will always be ready & willing to respond positively to your CQs & attempts to make a connection with Him (or Her? - We'll get into that some other time...), but another human may not always... not even your wife. Basically, it's much the same as praying for someone, except that it's not you coming with a specific petition for that person, but it's more like meditative prayer, sort of like the boy whom the pastor overheard citing the alphabet on his knees. When asked what he was doing, the boy responded, he didn't know what to pray & figured God was able to put the letters together Himself. Tuning in to the one you love is having meditative prayer for them. You use God's Spirit to help you find a common "ground" or wavelength for you and that person you care for: you draw them closer to your heart in the spirit, closer to God's heart, and thus you draw closer to them, obtain a greater understanding of them, better able to relate to them, and do what Paul (in the Bible) called "becoming one." He wrote, in his first epistle to the Corinthians, chapter 9, verses 19-22, that he became "unto the Jews as unto a Jew,... to the weak...as weak" and "all things to all men" so that he could get them saved. In modern English we call this relating to someone and we've been doing it, some to greater extent than others. "Walk A Mile In My Shoes" is a song we often sing, and another terminology we can use for it. But what I've been learning this week, is that we can even take this further, if we're interested enough, & really delve into a person's soul (and much more effectively so with the help of God's Spirit than most psychiatrists with their heady analyzes & money-oriented motivations) & get to know them better & better & better. In other words, even if you think you got stuck in some kind of dead end street with your relationship or marriage, don't throw in the towel prematurely, because God has promised to make a way where there is no way. Recently I found out that the origins of the word "respect" come from the latin "respicere," which means to look again. Often we think we have a person we're familiar with all figured out & there's nothing new and exciting to find out about them. Well, I found out that God may often tell us, "look again!" To really respect a person, means to look again, to have a closer look & give them a 2nd chance before you tuck them deeply into your mental drawer labeled "boring" or "unattractive," "too old," "undesirable" or "know all about them there is to know." People are what life is all about, & when Jesus said, "Seek ye first the Kingdom of God," (Mt.6:38), He was talking about people, because that's what the Kingdom of God consists of. So, I'm trying to make people my business these days, even - or especially the ones I'm closest to. It's not an entirely easy thing to do when you've been drilled all your life to be chasing after money & worrying about all those incredibly important things one has got to do, but I'd say it's definitely worth a try.

If We Only Knew How Little We Know

If we only knew how little we know. I think a lot of damage is being done in our times by people conveying to each other (and usually their weaker, more gullible brethren, like children) what they consider to be knowledge, but, which I am personally convinced will turn out to have been foolish fallacies at best, and dangerous & wicked deceit at worst. Teachers are such people, but I think what applies to them is what Jesus said on the cross about the Roman soldiers who crucified Him: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." teachers don't know any better than to pass on in their "chain of command" that which has been sold to them as "knowledge" or "science." Whether what they think to be fact is indeed so, or has anything to do with the truth is another matter. Some of the things they pass on to our children, such as the teachings of Evolution, are already highly disputed by a growing number of people, and I have already said enough about that subject. But it doesn't stop there. Currently, there is someone challenging the very basis of what today is called science, starting at Newton and not stopping short of Einstein, saying basically - from what I have understood so far - that Newton & Einstei may have made observations which were may have been valid or signs of "progress" for their time, but those observations, such as the discovery of the "law of gravity" were only part of a much greater whole, and thus they were often misnomers, since, according to the author, Mark McCutcheon, gravity is merely one part or manifestation of a much greater, universal force. It reminds me of the story of the 7 blind men coming across an elephant: One gets ahold of the tail & describes the elephant as a rope, one feels the trunk & says, "no, it's like a snake," the next touches a leg & says, "like a tree," another touches the elephants side & describes him as a wall; one grabs an ear & says, "no, he's like a big leaf," and the final one gets ahold of one of the tusks & says, "the elephant is like a spear." They're all right from their individual point of view, yet from the point of view of a seeing man, they're all quite mistaken, since the elephant is all those things together & more. I think we are a lot like those 7 blind men, and God is the One Who sees things as they really are. Jesus talked a lot about "blind leaders of the blind," & said to the Pharisees (who were responsible for His crucifixion) once, "If you would admit that you were blind, you wouldn't be guilty. But because you say 'we can see,' your guilt remains." (See John 9:39-41 and Matthew 15:14). I'm convinced that someday soon a lot of what we call "knowledge" or "science" today will be discarded in the same way that German schools aren't teaching their pupils anymore that the "Fuehrer" is their benevolent leader into a more prosperous future, which was the case 60 or 70 years ago. Which leads me to another category of mental "wealth" that is being passed on to the younger generations today, namely our moral values. Again, this reminds me of something Jesus said about the Pharisees: "What they tell you, do, but don't do as they do." Many things our kids are being taught in school may sound alright morally, but when it comes down to what is behind the "preaching," the visible example of how one is supposed to live their life, I personally see a different picture: I see a picture of people acting out of necessity, instead of true inner calling. In order to survive, they teach what they are being taught, regardless of whether these things be so or not. They believe what they're being fed without questioning, even if it's a whole fat bunch of lies. The majority wins. If enough people say it, it must be right, even if it makes no friggin' sense at all. That's also contrary to Jesus' teachings, who said that the majority was on the road to destruction (Matthew 7:13,14), and it doesn't resemble love for the truth, nor true open-mindedness or an incentive to search, investigate & find out the way things truly

happen to be. I suppose that kind of people will always be the minority as long as the "god of this world" will be the Enemy of the truth (see 2. Corinthians 4:4). Modern education is solely there for one purpose: to train the little batteries to share their part of the workload, to get the dough rolling in so the machine can keep functioning. There is only one moral law that runs through our entire System: "Thou shalt become a taxpayer!" (And nuthin' else matters!) As long as the little batteries behave, everything's alright, & otherwise they will be expelled, sent out with the rest of the scum on the fringes of society, where they will be dealt with in due time... the next "Fuehrer" will know how to.

WINE, WOMEN AND...

We just watched "Alfie" the other day, a comedy with Jude Law playing some kind of British gigolo in Manhattan. Actually, we only saw the first half of it, since the DVD was scratched, & it's not as if I had been extraordinarily impressed by that half-a-movie to waste my breath on it, but something he (Jude/"Alfie") said in the movie only hit home roughly 24 hrs later. During one of his typical monologues during which he seeks to impart his macho wisdom to the audience, he mentions that the most important things in life to him are "Wine, Women and..." then he pauses & says, "Well, that's it: wine & women." It only dawned on me today that the omitted third item on the list would have been "... and song." The one thing he could easily live without - as I'm sure many of his generation can, is music. Oddly enough, there has never been more music around, nor a greater offer of music than today. And maybe that's precisely one reason why music has become so dispensable to some - to many folks.

Personally, I have my own little "conspiracy theory" (again) about what's behind people's dying love for music. It's the music itself. I believe that a musical prophecy uttered in Don McLean's song from 1971, "Bye Bye Miss American Pie" has been fulfilled, about "the day the music died." Now, my audience has heard me joke many times when announcing this song (which I only play upon request), that the day the music died was the day Madonna recorded that song. This is supposed to be a joke, but there may be some truth to it. If you look at the nature of Madonna's recording of that classic: no more "living" acoustic guitar, piano, drums & bass rendering a song that was critical of the society in which it was born, and certainly way ahead of its time as far as the lyrics were concerned, let alone a voice like Don McLean's, which already inspired another songwriter to come down with "Killing Me Softly With His Song" in the 70s, but a sterile, monotonous beat, created in the same artificial manner as the rest of the "instruments," accompanying the sterile voice of a woman who has always been much more of a businessman than a musician. People were "forced" to like it and to consume it because it was played on the radios until its lifeless beat was drilled into every head, fulfilling the very prophecy those words, now rendered in a nonchalant, meaningless way: "the day the music died." Yes, ladies & gentlemen, music has been wiped off the list of the 3 essential things in life a man needs because it is dead, it has died, or rather, it has been killed, murdered, finished off.... drowned, strangled, suffocated, shot & stabbed. At least on the surface, it has, and as far as the superficial "Alfie" types care to look. In reality, you and I know that it hasn't really died, just like they can't kill love off completely in spite of all their efforts to commercialize, industrialize & fake it. But compared to the importance it used to have in people's lives for millennia before Madonna, it's true: it's dead by comparison. But there's an underground movement, very similar to a strange little Jewish sect in Palestine 2000 years ago, whose members were awaiting the resurrection of their publicly executed Leader. We, the true believers, know that music will live again, and it will live forever, just like true Christians know that one day their True King will reign, once He will have kicked out the usurper. I believe that in that process He will also kick out all those false "kings & queens of Pop," who are usurping the charts these days, and replace them with real, alive music again, such as people have known for thousands of years, when it still held a rank of importance, right beside "wine & women."

PERFECT LOVE
Tue 18 Jul 2006

Some folks could argue that I tend to display a very negative viewpoint in my opinions which I'm making so public here. And you're probably right that I should work on my level of sarcasm and tendency to look down on the way people tend to fall so easily for what I call "the Devil's lies." After all, I've fallen for his lies plenty enough times in my life myself, so, I don't have any reason to be self-righteous, and I sincerely apologize if I come across as critical or judgmental or conceited at times. The reason I'm stating my views here is not to show off how much smarter or more enlightened I may think I am, nor to add to the amount of negativity that is already there. My incentive is to show that there's a difference between true and false values. I may be negatively inclined toward things that a large majority would consider positive, or harmless at least. Yet I believe that I have a very positive attitude toward things which are largely ignored by the majority of people or even viewed as negative by some, yet which I consider the most important and essential things. I'm talking about faith, God, love, things I consider eternal values, values that one could compare in value to the lasting value of gold, as opposed to the fragile consistency of paper money. Take for example the subject of death, which a lot of people consider to be extremely negative, yet I recently came to the conclusion that death is probably one of the best things in life. So, just because I have a positive attitude about something you may consider negative, you could say I have a negative attitude. In reality, I'm just considering life so positive that I even consider death a positive part of it, and thanks to my faith I know that all things work together for good to those who love God, even our death. I even view death as something positive because it's nothing more than a transition to something even better than this life. ("Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints" Ps.116:15). Death is a journey we'll all have to embark on, & yet hardly anybody ever prepares for this trip simply because they deem it too negative to even think about it. So, this may be one of those terribly different from the norm points of view that Christians are so notorious for. I'm trying to get you turned on to my standard and system of values, and forgive me if in my attempt to do so I sometimes act a little condescendingly toward the currently popular & accepted system standard. All I'm saying is, "look, you can tell that the world isn't really going the right way with all its problems, and you can tell because you know deep inside that you're not truly happy with the way things are. But ignoring the wrong things isn't the way to deal with it. We've all been fooled big time & on a large scale about what really counts in life, and hey, I found out that there's something that works better than money to buy you happiness, and that's God's love. You get it by giving it away!" Maybe it's a little bit of an automatic self-defense if I tend to be a little sarcastic or critical in my attempts to convince people to try out what I found, since I know that many are

probably going to be highly critical & probably sarcastic about what I've got to say & offer, too. So, I'm still learning myself, in no way perfect, as no one else on this earth is. But I've found the perfect answer. I may not have developed a perfect skill yet at passing it on, and I may even come across as perfectly conceited with my claims or my ways of going about my advertising, but nevertheless I'm perfectly convinced that it's my duty to try, even if I do so quite imperfectly except for making a perfect fool of myself. All I can hope is that someone out there might be able to - by some divine miracle of God's grace - look beyond the imperfections in my approach, & dig what I'm trying to say & almost in spite of myself, stumble across this perfect love I'm talking about.

TRY SOME TRUTH!

I'm in the truth business. I'm dealing in truth. Interested? That's the problem. Hardly anyone is. As scarce as it is, the supply is much greater than the demand. In fact, most people nowadays don't even believe there even is such a thing as truth. Everything's cool, all is good, your truth is yours and my truth is mine. Jesus, Buddha, Krishna, Satan... whatever gets you through the night. But that's where it comes in handy to know the truth (yes, that thing nobody believes in anymore): to help you distinguish the lies. You realize that's baloney. The truth is that there's a whole bunch of lies out there, you're being spoonfed them daily, and in fact, they're so many, you're virtually drowning in them. You've been programmed to believe that you're a product of chance, of some random chain reaction that started billions of years ago, without any purpose; that the complicated machine of your body came into being basically by itself, through chemical & biological processes, and a whole bunch of lies about other things: history, politics, economics, religion... just turn on your TV. Why? Who or what is supposed to be telling those lies anyway? Somebody who you've been told doesn't exist, which is one of the biggest tricks & lies he ever pulled on mankind. Jesus called him "the father of lies" (John 8), and let me tell you, he's got a lot of children. Look at George Bush. Listen to the news. "There are no secret foreign prisons" & blah blah blah. No wonder people aren't interested in the truth. In this world of lies, the truth has become an absurdity. So, I guess you're still not interested, huh? This is too depressing, you say. I must be paranoid, one of those conspiracy freaks. Actually, I'm not paranoid. The neat thing is, once you've really discovered the truth, you're not nearly as scared anymore of anything that they used to intimidate & bully you into with their lies. You have discovered that the Father of truth is infinitely more powerful than the father of lies, and that if you're on His side, none of those split-tongued nincompops can even phase you. How arrogant, conceited, biased, narrow-minded, intolerant & bigoted of me, you say, to claim that I've got the truth and you're all living a lie, you say? Well, it's not like I've never been fooled before, or that I'm immune to the lies. In fact, I keep discovering baloney they used to feed me as truth, keep discovering false & wrong ways in my past thinking, I keep uncovering the true foundation everything is based on & the way things really are, and I probably have only begun to scratch the surface. And it's not like I'm showing off with something I've got that you can't have. In fact, I'm offering it to you. It won't even cost you a thing. Just give Jesus a chance. If you have a Bible, wipe the dust off of it & can all the baloney you've been brainwashed with about it for the past decades, that it has been manipulated, falsified, tampered with, misinterpreted, whatever, and read it. Read what Jesus had to say & see for yourself whether it makes any sense or not. Or if you can't read, watch the movie, "The Gospel Of John." Or best of all, ask Him yourself, what He has to say to you personally. It is a lie that He wouldn't speak to you personally. It's a lie that He's too busy. You see, He's not bound by time. It's a little hard to imagine how that works, but C.S.Lewis explained it this way in "Mere Christianity:" "If there was a controlling power

outside the universe, it could not show itself to us as one of the facts inside the universe no more than the architect of a house could actually be a wall or staircase or fireplace in that house." He's not part of the creation, nor bound to its rules and limits, since He's the creator. It's just that we're trying to squeeze Him into the narrow box of our own finite imagination and perception, which, as I indicated before, has been very heavily shaped and influenced by lies. "Forget what you know" is a good slogan to go by, if what you're looking for is the truth. The Bible has a lot to say about the difference between what the world considers knowledge and true knowledge or wisdom (see 1.Corinthians 1, for example.) It doesn't have a lot of compliments for those folks who deem themselves so smart & think they know it all. When it all comes down to it: What do we really know at all? I for one, will stick to the Source that has been tried and proven reliable in my own life for 30 years now, and for millions of others for millennia before us: the Word of God, and not to the baloney some wise guys write about it. Most of them just write their crap because they get a lot of money paid for it to keep the masses as far away from enlightenment & truth as possible, or simply because they're too scared of the truth themselves or simply hate it. It's tough having to cowtow to a Head Honcho Who knows it all better than yourself - if you insist on being the head honcho yourself. I leave that to all those big somebodies out there, the innumerable little Hitlers, Stalins, Napoleons, Cesars & whatnots out there & will perfectly contentedly continue being a nobody. I know, I'm a lousy salesman. I could try it like the churches & tele-evangelists & sell you the cross with flashy neon-lights, pomp & big ado about it. Nah, I don't need all that suff. Just give me the raw, naked truth, & I'll be satisfied with that. It may not look like a lot in this lie-oriented world, but it's the only thing that will last. Long after all that make-believe paper money will have ceased to exist, God's good gold will still buy you anything you need. So, how about a little investment in a 100% crisis-proof currency? Because that's what the truth is. In fact, it's the only currency that will get you anywhere on that journey we'll all have to embark on one of these days: the journey into the other world, when we'll have to leave our mortal bodies behind. The place where you'll find out that the notion that "when you're dead, you're gone" was just another lie. I can't force you into it, nor persuade you to take it, but I'd highly recommend it. Try some TRUTH today, you won't regret it!

The God Code

Sun 20 Aug 2006 Sir Isaac Newton became most famous for his discovery of what he called the "law of gravity," a milestone in what we call science. And certainly he does deserve credit for his initiative & vision to put into words or a formula what he observed when he watched that apple plummet to the ground, as untold thousands doubtlessly had before him, yet without ever questioning why it was so. What few people know, though, is the fact that while a lot of modern science is based on Newton's theory about an attracting force originating from the center of not only our own planet, but likewise from the center of every other astral body, like our moon & sun, there are fundamental questions about this theory which remain unanswered; inexplicable irregularities and unexplained holes in the theory of gravity, which are examined at length in Mark McCutcheon's daring book "The Final Theory." So much on what we think we know. But I don't wish to expound here on physical phenomena, but rather a spiritual one, one which had already intrigued Sir Isaac Newton as well, and I wouldn't be a bit surprised if - when all is said & doe - he will have turned out to be more right on about this one than gravity. Isaac Newton believed in the existence of a hidden code in the Bible - a code he wasn't able to crack in his day for the lack of one of our present day commodities: computers. Various books have been written about the "Bible Code," which is certainly an interesting subject, although I daresay that while their authors have doubtlessly made an amazing discovery in cracking the Bible code, I'm afraid they are distracting from a much larger, and yet much simpler "code" -God's code, His coded message to us in everything. We find encoded information in everything, even in the tiniest life form, the single cell; and since I believe everything in the physical world to be an illustration of some greater spiritual truth, I started thinking about the purpose of God's code in everything. Evidently, His message to us - so obviously plain & simple to understand for many of us, simply by observing His creation - is encoded, because it obviously eludes that grasp of others. They simply don't get it. They don't hear, see or perceive His message, but instead honor the great mysterious force of chance, coincidence or accident as the originator of all things, & since chance is obviously not a very eloquent author of information, its believers are thus nearly oblivious to any "messages" or information being conveyed to us by our Creator. While Sir Isaac Newton may have been wrong about some details concerning gravity, he thankfully was not as deaf, blind & willingly ignorant as a good many of those who fail to perceive God's message, His code, which Isaac Newton in inspired foresight rightly suspected to exist, way before the word "code" was even developed & used to the extent we do today. It seems like God's "code" renders His messages to us invisible and inaudible to certain people - those referred to as materialists, since they believe that everything - all intelligent life - came into being from nothing, which - quite inexplicably - was changed - by itself - into lifeless matter upon which happened to fall a mathematically utterly preposterous amount of luck in order to bring forth a universe which functions better than any other device ever planned or constructed. It seems there are two separate major "codes" circulating and at work, used by two opposing

forces: the code or language God uses in order to communicate with those who pertain & subscribe to His "system" (who are also referred to as His "children" or simply "His people"), and the "information" (or should we rather call it disinformation?) which leads people to totally ignore the first, leaving them absolutely incapable of perceiving it in any form. A person initiated & familiar with God's code will look at a flower or a blue sky & will perceive in it a message of a deep love from a loving Father, while the materialist will at best merely marvel at the feats than chance or coincidence happened to have landed there in rolling the chemical dice & bringing about that plant or atmosphere... Why did God have to encode His message then and hide His meaning, His purpose, His very existence from some people? Jesus - certainly the highest authority on "God's Code," said, "There are none so blind as those who will not see." In other words, they don't want to understand. They don't wish to hear God's message, nor what He has to say, & thus are open only to the other source of "information." The Bible refers to the difference between the two codes in the terms "truth" and "lie." The code of God, or the code of truth, in this case, is also very closely related to another code, which we refer to as moral code, or also, our code of conduct. C. S. Lewis refers to this "moral law" brilliantly and at length in his classic "Mere Christianity" & states that while we all expect a certain standard from others, and a certain minimum ability for them to abide by our moral code, yet we utterly fail every day to uphold that same standard ourselves. Probably we don't manage to apply the code successfully because we don't familiarize ourselves with it sufficiently. Without doubt, the purest Source & greatest concentration of God's Code is found in what is traditionally referred to as His Word, which, for one, is found in the Bible. The problem with the Bible lies not - a so often assumed - with the Bible itself, but rather with the information which we have been fed about the Bible, along with all that other "information" about where we come from (= nowhere) or where we're going (= nowhere?)... Once we are willing to lay all that "information" aside, we'll find in it a true source of wisdom way beyond our imagination and more. For not only is the Bible a Source of unlimited knowledge & wisdom in itself , but it opens up a direct line of communication with its divine Author, which allows us to tap into the knowledge & wisdom on anything we may want to know. (The materialist & skeptic will argue here that people, not God authored the Bible, but those savvy to God's code the Bible was written in will understand that God just happens to use anything including people - to convey His message). Once we have accepted God's code, He constantly delivers new and fresh revelations & bits of information to us, open and decrypted (decoded), clearly understandable to us, the "user." It's almost like two major software companies constantly competing with each other, each one "selling" to its users their version of their latest "operating system," which we refer to as "reality." Since I have been using God's "Operating System" successfully and efficiently for the past 3 decades, not without having made my own experiences with the competition's "software," I most vehemently recommend God's system, of course: it's cheaper (for free), much more accurate, reliable & it simply works fabulously & keeps your machine running and running and a joy to behold. Why other users would prefer to purchase & subscribe to the other system is nearly incomprehensible to me, except that I understand that using the other system more or less grants its user somewhat more independence. One can be their own "god" using the other system - and for those who settle for that kind of a religion or belief system, I guess that's their choice. Personally, quality ranks higher in priority on my list than self-adoration, and in addition to that, I

have found much greater pleasure & fulfillment at the hand of exterior sources, other than my own little ego. This, if we want to give a name to the other code, competing with God's, invented by His adversary, one could call it the "I-code," "me-code" or the "code of ego," since both, the inventor of that code and system and its subscribers and users obviously are having a problem with recognizing any higher spiritual authority than their own. The "I-code" system does not allow its users to operate any software from the Competition, which leaves the "I-code" user blind and oblivious to the God-Code. It actually leaves them ignorant of the existence of any other system, code, program or possibility. On the other hand, every "God-user" has had their experience with "I-code" and even regularly keeps slipping back into "I-mode," just in order to learn to fully appreciate the advantages of God's far superior system. "God-users" are fully aware of the weakness of the "I-system," whereas "I-users" are oblivious even to the existence of the other. Still, it makes me wonder why God would have made it so difficult for I-users to even be able to perceive His code. Codes are usually used for secrecy, privacy and security. What would God have to be afraid of? This sounds so un-like God's nature to me. Why would God have secrets? The only thing that occurs to me is that He possibly may have wanted to protect His system from forgery. The Devil is a sly imitator, and in many aspects it seems like he copies God's code. In fact, when Jesus said to His disciples that the time would come that those who would kill them would think they were doing service to God in persecuting His true disciples, He seemed to indicate that there were going to be some I-users around eventually who were posing as God-users, only in order to try to destroy God's system, so to speak, from within. Which would explain why there are so may Christians in the world today that make openminded observers and otherwise open-hearted for the truth run the other way & think, "no way. This can't be it." Some high-ranking politician could, for example, pose as a Christian or Goduser, but act totally contrary to God's actual moral code & code of conduct and instead of fulfilling the great universal law of "thou shalt love," kill instead, and wage war against poor countries. He could use righteous-sounding mottos and reasons for his actions as a camouflage, but simply because he would pose as Christian or God-user, millions would vote for him and not see through his deception. I wonder if anything like this might actually be happening on this planet right now! (Now, kids, this is something for you to find out for yourselves as homework: look around for some politician you know and see whether this description might fit.) So, it does seem, after all, necessary for God to have encoded His message to us, otherwise there would probably be so many fakes and imposters running around, we'd drown in confusion. In fact, He seems to have used just the right amount of security-grade in His encryption for still enough of us to get His point & message and for not too many hooligans & phonies to steal & imitate His code so that we would still have hope to find our way out of the sea of counterfeitChristians out there... Actually, the more familiar one becomes with God's code, the easier it will become for him to detect, recognize and expose a forger & counterfeit user. While these are just a few simple observations I'm allowed to make on a phenomenon I stumbled upon, possibly similar to the way Newton first stumbled upon gravity or the existence of a Bible code, just as in Newton's case, I'm afraid we've only begun to scratch the surface. I have often compared this life with a school, but in some ways - especially when it comes to these mysteries of God - it feels more like kindergarten. Who knows? Maybe I just put another toy block on the foundation someone else started, inspiring you to find the next one & put it on

top of mine? Maybe our entire childish construction will collapse at one point & will have to give way to a better, stronger & surer one... What message is God trying to convey to you today? Are you in the possession of His decoding device? If not, or if you're not certain, make sure you're running on His Operating System by downloading His Master Software, the program of God's forgiveness through Jesus. Just ask Him to delete all your former errors & to reformat your Hard Drive & give you a new start, cleanslated & install Jesus on the machine of your heart for a system that won't ever crash. Then you will also be able to obtain - for free, just like all the other stuff - the decoding software, the Holy Spirit, which will help you understand God's code, all He has to say to you personally through His Word, through His creation, through anything, if you listen carefully enough, and there will be no end to the things you will yet discover that will downright thrill you to pieces. Take this advice from a more than satisfied customer. You'll still have problems, alright, and you'll continue to experience virus attacks and other malicious code trying to damage your system. Just make sure you regularly update your software, your spiritual firewall & viruschecker, or use the 24/7 customer service. God's company is the one you can surely trust. Just stay tuned to His code!

Simply Ask For It!

Sat 26 Aug 2006
There is an entire category & field of teachings on which the average Christian ignores most of what the Bible truly has to say, and that's the very fundamental topic of Salvation. Most Christians only know a single verse about Salvation, and that's the one where Paul says, "Work out your own salvation in fear and trembling" (Phil.2:12). They interpret it to mean, "You see? You can lose your salvation if you don't watch out, if you don't stop sinning, and if you don't come to our church regularly." But is that really what it means? Does Salvation only work - in other words, did Jesus' death on the cross only do the trick for you if you successfully manage to stop sinning during your life-time and you faithfully go to mass? Doubtlessly, many people attend church regularly in hopes that the latter is true; that they will escape hellfire by their weekly one-hour sacrifice, but how many people would actually be in heaven, if the former were true - if only those are saved who have stopped sinning? Some folks seem to be scared that there's not room enough in heaven, if they "allowed" too many people in, and that their churches would be too empty if it were too easy to get saved. Now, while the latter would obviously be a tragedy, let's have a closer look at what else the Bible has to say on Salvation and what one has to do to be saved, to have eternal life, as Jesus said, and in other words, to go to heaven: In the first chapter of the Gospel of John, the apostle John describes how Jesus was more than an ordinary man, namely that He was actually the "Logos," the very Word of God, the One through Whom and by Whom the World was made, and that actually He was God. Not God the Father, but God the Son, Whom the Father had sent to become flesh for us and to die for our sins (see Jn.3:16). John also describes how the majority of the people back in those days did not receive Him, but that they rejected Him as the darkness rejects the light, but in verse 12 he says, "But as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God." Now, a lot of people don't take the Bible literally, since that would mean that the earth had been created within 6 days, a little more than 6000 years ago, which totally contradicts what they have been brainwashed with all their lives (which I have expounded on in greater detail in former blogs, as have others). Let me suffice it to say that those, whose God is not great enough to have made the world in 6

days, obviously won't have the faith that He could have saved you from your sins without your feverishly striving to become perfect on your own. But for the rest of us, let's have a look at that verse: "As many as received Him (Jesus), to them gave He power to become the sons of God." That seems to indicate that all you have to do in order to become one of God's children (and we're not all God's children from birth, as most would claim: we're all God's creatures, but obviously not all of the same Father spiritually, see John 8:44), is to receive Jesus and His coming, the purpose of which was to pay the price for your sins on the cross, as predicted in Jewish and pre-Jewish symbolisms throughout millennia beforehand, from Abel's first sacrifice (of a lamb) to the Passover. Now, once you are a child of God, can you lose your status as "child of God" again, let's say, by doubting or by sinning? Can one "un-become" a child of God again, according to behavior? In other words, "yesterday I was a child of God, because I was behaving well, but today I'm not, because I happened to come across the image of a scarcely clad woman on a billboard sign, and it made me have unclean thoughts"? Well, if God made physical families to illustrate His spiritual Family, then let's use our brains: you may have a son or daughter who may have strayed from the straight & narrow, who may have become a thief, a prostitue or even a murderer, but by law, they're still your child, right? Even though some may say, "you're not my son or daughter anymore," the law says something different. Likewise, God is bound by His law, which is His Word, and that seems to say: once His child, forever His child, no matter what you do! We become and remain God's children not because of what we do (except the act of receiving and accepting Christ), but in order to learn and become able to act the way God would like us to. He gives us the power to not only be, but also behave like His children, eventually, simply by the act of receiving Him. Of course, in order to learn to act like a child of God, and to become a fully mature son or daughter, we must continue receiving Him (through His Word and Spirit) every day. But even if we don't, and don't ever behave like one (as unfortunate as that may be), we still remain His children. There can be no uncertainty about that (although there is, sadly, among the majority of people). But we haven't even begun to scratch the surface of what the Bible has to say on this topic. In Chapter 3:36 John writes: "He that believeth the Son hath everlasting life," and later, in his first epistle, again: "he that hath the Son hath life" (5:12). Note that it doesn't say, "providing he stops sinning forever and keeps going to church every Sunday." The scripture that changed Martin Luther's life from one of a self-castigating monk, living in the usual, catholic eternal insecurity and into that of "the most important religious figure of the last thousand years" who brought to life the reformation and thus the protestant church, is another one which most "salvation by works" adherents simply choose to ignore (it's too easy for them that one should only have to receive the gift of salvation without having to do something to earn it): In Ehphesians 2 verse 8 & 9 Paul wrote, "For by grace are ye saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God. Not of works, lest any man should boast." What good work can you possibly do that would merit Christ's sacrifice for you on the cross? Isn't it a little preposterous to assume that anything you could do could ever live up to "deserve" that, no matter how hard you try? It's understood that God would prefer that we should start behaving better. But He does not make His gift of salvation depend on anything we do (no, not even church attendance). Besides, He has His own little ways of making us behave. What does a human father do in order to teach his child how to behave (well, at least fathers used to): discipline or correct the child. If you're God's child, He won't let you get away with living the wrong way without allowing you to pay the consequences for it. God disciplines us, His children (see Hebrews 12:6). But He doesn't say: "for this you don't deserve to be My child any longer." Jesus said, "Him that cometh to Me, I will in no wise cast out." Or in modern English: "If someone comes to Me, I won't kick him out!" (John 6:37). So, what did Paul mean then, when he said, "Work out your own salvation in fear and trembling"? Especially if the very next verse says something to the opposite extent again: "For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure." How can you "work out your own salvation" when it's a gift of God, and it's God Who performs both, the desire in us to do His will, as well as the

enacting of it? Well, obviously, in the light of all the other Scritpures (and there are more, but this is only a blog, not a book), Pillipians 2:19 cannot be referring to our eternal salvation or that which we would be referring to as Heaven, since that is a gift, and that's settled. But as far as the physical manifestations of that salvation in this earthly life are concerned, we're going to have to work at it. And since we have a powerful spiritual adversary who tries his darndest to get us to forsake God's way, who tries to stop us from doing good, and tempts us to do evil instead, and commit any little sin he can think of, it requires some healthy fear of God and serious effort to win that fight. In other words, if you don't only want to be a child of God, but also want to act and behave like one, you're going to have to do more than go to church and say "I'm a Christian." Church Christians are really making it easy on themselves when they say, "Well, I'm fulfilling my part of the deal: I counteract my eternal insecurity by faithfully attending church every Sunday. So, my salvation is a little bit more guaranteed than yours, if you don't go to church." In reality, to really act worthy of the gift of salvation, we ought to be ashamed of ourselves for even thinking that one hour a week would make up for that. Jesus gave His all for us on the cross, and all we give Him in return is an hour a week? If that's what being saved or being a Christian means, then it's no wonder the churches are getting emptier and the world is becoming more and more appalled by "Christianity." To wind up this discussion on eternal Salvation by grace, I want to quote another of my favorite scriptures on the subject from the Gospel of Mark: "Whosoever shall not receive the Kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein" (10:15). How can we receive the Kingdom of God in the same way a little child would receive anything? By working hard for it and feverishly striving to attain some state of sinless perfection in order to be found worthy and deserving? Having 6 children of my own, I would say that should be a rather exceptional child. And Jesus specifially mentioned a "little child." Now, I don't know about you, but the way most children I know get anything they want is to simply ask for it. Jesus is saying that there is no other way to enter the Kingdom of God, to be saved, to go to Heaven and receive His Salvation and gift of eternal life, than to simply ask for it. Which leads us to the conclusion that all we have to do in order to be saved is to pray (and it's a prayer we only need to pray once), to ask God for it: "Can I please go to heaven?" Or, if it's in receiving Jesus that we are saved, I can imagine a child asking, "Jesus, can I have You?" Or, as we've prayed ourselves, and have prayed with many others since: "Jesus, come into my heart!" Too simple, you say? Well, obviously not for God. "Whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved" (Acts 2:21). P.S.: One of the biggest struggles St.Paul had with a large part of the early church was with those who thought they had to "help" God to keep them saved by keeping parts of the old Jewish traditions, such as the circumcision, or sticking only to "clean" or "kosher" foods, etc. Galatians chapter 3 is one of those examples of writings he dediated to those who thought they had to complete God's spiritual work of salvation by their own carnal contributions. Similarly, millions of Christians today believe they have to observe certain rituals (the most popular of which being the Sunday morning ritual) in order to "stay" saved or be saved at all. It's no wonder that Christians at large don't feel anywhere near capable of complying with Jesus' instruction to all of His disciples to "preach the gospel" and tell others about Him. If it's so difficult to be saved that most even don't know for sure themselves whether they are saved or not, then, what's the use in telling anyone else about it? Blessed are they of childlike faith, who have received the Kingdom as a child and have found out that it simply works, and that it must thus work for others, too. It's not only easy to get saved yourself, but it's also easy to get others saved, too. It's called "winning souls." All you need to do is get someone to pray with you to receive Jesus. It's as simple as that. Let all the other "why-make-it-easy-whe-you-can-make-it-complicated" types struggle up their self-made "stairway to heaven," but "beware lest ye be led astray from the simplicity of Christ" (see Col.2:8, 2.Cor.11:3). While not every aspect of the Christian faith is necessarily simple, this fundamental one of salvation is. So simple, in fact, that any little child could grasp or receive it.

WHY?
Why I deliberately choose to remain a member of an ill-reputed religious group. It's nice to have friends. One of the the biggest pains in life is connected with losing friends. While some of the friends I've lost in my life were probably shooed away by my quirks, temper or some other sin or fault I committed, there have also been those who simply chose not to associate with us anymore because we're part of the Family Intl. Of course, it hurts, when someone chooses not to be acquainted with you anymore because of your religion, faith or belief, or group you belong to, and the question might arise, "how many more friendships are you willing to risk over your religion?" Or, "why can't you join a proper church or something?" Or, once the decision has been made to remain in the group, one wonders whether it wouldn't be smarter to hide our association with such a highly controversial outfit, take the link off the website & lay low for a while... So, what is it that makes me seemingly defy reason, or at least ignore the opinion of reasonable people who ought to have some good reasons for choosing not to associate with me anymore because of my membership of The Family? The history of this stubbornness, as some would probably call it, goes back to when I was 13, or even a little earlier. I had declared war on God around the age of 10 due to the absence & total lack of love in the catholic church I had thus far attended, and henceforth became a stout atheist. Well, not all too stout, since the Jehovah's Witnesses managed to convince me of the existence of God about 2 years later, and I started becoming familiar with the Bible. When I met the Family, I was directly introduced to the Author of that Book, and the New Testament I was given became my constant companion anywhere I went. I read it. I probably read it a few times. And what I read there, prepared me for what was going to happen later on in my life. I learned there that Jesus also lost friends. Not only that, but He taught His disciples that in His eyes, it was more fortunate to be persecuted, maligned and lied about than to be popular. Not only did He prepare them for the event of future persecution by letting them know the obvious, that if the religious establishment persecuted Him, they would also persecute His followers, but He even went on to say that people would think they were doing service to God by doing so. Paul even went as far as to say that no one could live piously as a Christian, if they didn't ever suffer persecution... (2Tim.3:12) I knew that everybody else believed that that was valid 2000 years ago, but didn't apply today. Everybody else, except the Family. That's why, when I came home one afternoon and my stepmother waved a whole bunch of glossy magazines in my face, full of articles about the in-flagranti exposure of Moses David and his sex cult, the Children of God, and when the Police raided the local residence of the Family in my home town, detaining me for questioning, I wasn't all too shocked, really. It fit the picture of what I had been reading in the Gospels all along, perfectly.

I don't believe that Moses David, as he was called during the 70s, was perfect or infallible. I know he made mistakes. So do I. But the good he did, and the fruit of it that resulted in my life and the lives of others I have known excedes the bad he might have caused by his mistakes. Even though he was wrong about a few things, I still believe he was a genuine prophet of God. I understand there are folks who strongly differ with me on this point. To most church Christians it's just about as presumptuous to call someone a prophet as it was for the Pharisees that Jesus claimed to be the Son of God. And to most church Christians it was just as atrocious to hear about our sexual freedom as it was for the Pharisees to deal with the liberty Jesus and His disciples had... If you have an unbiased look at where all that doctrine came from that gave sex, or even extramarital sex the image of being something sinful ("fornication," "adultery," etc.), you might eventually grant me the right to my own belief concerning these matters, because you might be just as wrong about yours as you think that I am, if you weigh the Scriptures against each other. The reason I prefer to believe the Family what they've got to say on these matters is because they also obey all the other parts of the Bible, that church Christians say don't apply anymore. And besides, I've always liked sex, and have always been comfortable with the idea of having sex with more than one single person in your life. Recently I got in touch with a former member of the Family, who wants to get back in touch with us, because although he had his doubts about the Family, what he found out there in the great big world didn't seem to be all that hot, either. He argued, "somebody must have done something to all those people and angry ex-members (like Ricky Rodrigues, who killed another former member and committed suicide in order to draw attention to the alleged atrocities committed in the Family), to make them so mad, and to react so violently..." Something to that extent. My reply to this reasoning was that they probably could have said the same thing about Jesus, too: What Jesus was doing wasn't exactly the "family-friendly" thing to do: he ripped at least 12 young men we know of from their families and jobs in order to pursue a highly questionable career as some kind of "Gospel bums," except that the word "Gospel" hadn't even been yet invented. They must have looked and sounded just as weird back then as we do nowadays. Someone could argue, "What made Judas react so vehemently, and caused him to betray Jesus and commit suicide? Someone must have done something to him in order for him to react that way..." Personally, I believe that the Family cannot be blamed for Ricky Rodriguez' actions any more than Jesus could be blamed for Judas Iscariot's actions. What most people don't realize - because they refuse to & are often too scared to do so - is that there is a spiritual factor they overlook: that there is an evil force working quite feverishly against the forces of good, and in fact, according to Jesus, Paul and John, that force is the ruling force of the world right now, and it reacts in an extremely hostile manner to any attempts of good to infiltrate the kingdom it is usurping. Those who choose to ignore that spiritual factor will never understand folks like me. They will always come up with legitimate reasons and excuses why it's better not to be associated with lunatics like us, because they purposely blind themselves to the fact that there is a spiritual force at work trying to make cowards out of a lot of people. They will refuse to ever try to see us objectively because they don't want to believe that they're being lied to as extensively as they are. What matters to them

is not whether something is true or false, but whether it's what the majority believes. However, Jesus was and is the Leader of a minority. I don't blame anyone for not having the guts to be associated with us. I know, I have chosen a path that's pretty hard to swallow, to cope with, and to understand. I'm only thankful for those who somehow seem to sense that if they will even just give us a cup of cold water because we're Jesus' disciples, that they will somehow, somewhere be richly rewarded for it. I'm looking forward to the day when those who may be ashamed of us right now, will be proud to have known us, when the truth will be revealed & the cards will all be laid on the table, and everything and everyone will be clearly seen for what it is and what they are and have been. There'll be surprises. Probably for everyone.

Nationalism Vs. Christianity! - Who do you serve, your country or your Savior?
Sept.27, 2006
Who do you serve, your country or your Savior?
Most American Christians I have known are primarily Americans, and secondarily Christians. Their foremost loyalty and allegiance is to the American flag, their nation, that "great country" that they seem to believe has given them everything they have and has given them the opportunity to enjoy all they've got, and their "freedom." When Jesus preached to the Jews about freedom (see John 8), they said, "we've never been anyone's servant...." They didn't see the need for any liberation, because they thought they were already free. But Jesus said, "I am telling you the truth: whoever commits a sin is a servant of sin." The sad thing is that a lot of Christians merely use their religion as a cloak for their sin; a cloak to hide it, especially from themselves. The rest of the world isn't that easily fooled, because most of us can tell real righteousness from hypocrisy, true faith and saintliness from mere disguised selfishness and self-adulation. It's what C.S. Lewis called the universal moral law, which Paul also described in his epistles, as doing those things which are lawful, even when we don't know the law, while others, claiming to keep the "law" are often its greatest violators. Now let's expose that sin of nationalism. What's so bad about being a patriot and at the same time claiming to be a true Christian? If Christians would read their Bibles a little more, instead of just listen to the prechewed versions of what the Bible supposedly says, from their TV-evangelists and preachers, they would know. First of all, Jesus said to His disciples, His followers, those who adhere to His teachings: "You are not from this world." (John 15:19). John takes this further in his epistles and says, "If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him" (1Jn 2:17), and James even says, "friendship with the world is enmity with God" (James 4:4).

So, since your country is evidently a very visible and tangible part of the world (and not only that, but in most patriot's mind, also the best in the world, and "champion of the world,") you're going to have to make a decision whom you're going to serve, and who is your master, since Jesus said you can't serve both. Most American Christians justify any criminal action of their nation against another by the mere fact that if they're a Christian nation, so that whatever they do, whichever nation they fall into and breathe slaughter against, it can't be wrong. But that attitude is in itself very wrong and is based on the grossest of collective self-deception that human history has probably ever seen. A true Christian and a true believer is one of those described in the 11th chapter of Hebrews, where we find a list of all those great pilgrims & strangers who refused to call this world (and any nation in it) their home, because they were seeking for a better Place, Whose Builder and Maker is God. So, when it comes down to it, I strongly disagree with anyone who says that they can be a devout patriot and a true believer, a real Christian, at the same time, but I will even call every flag-waving patriot pretending to be a Christian a hypocrite and a traitor. There were a lot of Christians in the 3rd Reich under Hitler, who swallowed the baloney that Adolf was supposed to have been a Christian & this figured that God was on their side and whatever Hitler did couldn't be wrong. Some people have pointed out the striking similarity between Germany toward the beginning stages of the 3rd Reich and the Bush administration, and I think they're right, though Bush wasn't the first American president whom some compared to Hitler (- a little insider quiz on the side: Who was "Nitler?"). But only few Christians in Hitlers Germany, like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, did not betray their genuine Christian convictions for the sake of the collective fake religion that was handed them, and thus it is again today. Those flag waving collaborators with the injustices committed against the poor in the world of today will be found just as guilty in the history books of the future as the cowards & hypocrites of yesterday. There will be no claims of "but we didn't know" that will evoke anyone's sympathies. If you're calling yourself a true Christian, then follow your Master's teachings and not the lies of the gods of this world!

Advantages of Being a Nobody October 14, 2006

The advantages of being a nobody are - from a believer's point of view - not to be underestimated, although they don't make any sense, nor do they present any value to the agnostic mind or merely logical thinker. The rewards of becoming "somebody" are obvious: fame, money, "success," the ability to pat yourself on the back & say, "yeah, I've made it!" The rewards of remaining a nobody are much more subtle instead, yet not any less real to the one who is able to recognize and perceive them at all: Lack of fame keeps you humble and able to keep the Lord in the No.1 position, instead of yourself. Lack of money keeps you dependent on Him, trusting in Him, instead of your wealth. Success becomes something else to you than as what it is commonly conceived: instead of being synonymous with acquiring the preceding commodities, success instead can be measured by the way you managed to love someone today or the way you made it through the day without worrying, fussing or cussing, and appreciated the little things and people around you instead... And as far as not being able to pat yourself on the back for your own accomplishment goes, you're clearly able to give honor to Whom it is due for whatever did get accomplished. Being a musician, it can be even tougher to observe others ascend to fame and fortune while you yourself seem to be passed and ignored by "Lady Luck," but then... Did you ever notice how a lot of bands or songwriters seem to lose that magic about their songs as soon as they made it to the top? The examples I could list of this phenomenon in secular music that come to my mind are more than I could number here. You're a fan of a certain singer or songwriter and think "they're the greatest," but along comes album no. 7 or 5, 3, or even 2, and you're disappointed. It's gone. The stress of fame has choked out the magic that got them there in the first place... When it comes to Christian artists, they sometimes seem to be able to preserve that spark of genuine inspiration a bit longer than their secular counterparts, depending on the "realness" of their faith & relationship with Jesus, I guess. My absolute heroes for a long time were Shane (Barnard) & Shane (Everett), and their earlier albums have certainly been a great enrichment & obviously an influence on my own songwriting since... ("Breath Of God" or "May The Words" are classics that really lit up our musical landscape!) I'm really happy for the guys being so busy and booked out, but sometimes that "busy-ness" comes through in the music one creates & replaces that sweet humble touch of the Holy Ghost that was there originally. Caedmon's Call were the next candidates to make my day, musically speaking, and songs like "Walk With Me" or "Shifting Sand" have a magic to them that doesn't seem to cease. As far as their later productions are concerned, one can also tell that fame and popularity have claimed their dues in that original simplicity and inspiration, although I take my hat off to the guts ... had in singing "I Repent." (Thank you for saying what you did in that song! Where's the studio version?) Next came Watermark with that voice that puts mega stars like Shania Twain to shame, and the live (?) version of "Knees To The Earth" is a classic that I can imagine still being sung years from now... More of that simplicity would have done it for me! Jeremy Camp is definitely one of my musical heroes, and I loved his Unplugged DVD/CD with the sweet & simple performance of his wife, coming on stage barefoot... One could definitely tell that those guys' faith is real on that show. There probably is a way to "walk by faith" even when

you're incredibly talented and blessed with goods, & I congratulate anyone who gets there. I only wish there would be a little more focus on the lost sheep out there, some of that "missionary" approach, not just singing over and over again to the 99 who are already safely in the fold, but follow the Master out into the dark & cold wilderness to find that one lost sheep... Finally, Bethany Dillon, aka "Da Fu-chah," or at least a big hope of the future for some, including myself. She has touched my heart more than any of the above with her songs, & it must be that conviction that comes from the heart of such a young person, truly dedicated to God... What I like about her is that she even talks about Bible passages she reads on her Web Log, and to me that shows that she really lives in the Word, which is the secret of faith. I only pray that she stays true to that devotion & won't allow the cares of this life to choke that seed. Recently I came across some stuff by Natasha Bedingfield, who apparently has a Christian background, but doesn't allow all too much of those (former?) convictions to shine through in her present stuff, like "Single." I don't want to misjudge the lady, nor begrudge her her fame, (even if it may come across like that), but to me it looks like a typical example of someone for whom fame and popularity have become more important than their faith. According to secular reasoning that may make perfect sense, but who was it that said that faith isn't what it should be unless it's all you've got, or something to that extent? Anyways, that's the kind of faith I'm seeking, and I'm grateful that I haven't been "blessed" with too many distractions on my way there... It's good to be a nobody. It's almost a bit like being invisible. While all the somebodies are trying so hard to look good for all the people staring at them, nobodies have time to look and see and observe for themselves... and see things many others cannot ... and hear things, too!

Our Father November 7, 2006

Having been raised to atheism in a catholic church, where everyone monotonously mumbled the Lord's prayer as if it were a punishment in itself, for many years, even since becoming a Christian, I didn't feel comfortable praying the Lord's prayer. For one thing, I didn't dig it or understand what it was supposed to be all about. Although there are many mystic and esoteric attempts to de-mystify this actually rather simple prayer (after all, it's the only piece of liturgy - apart from the last supper - the Lord ever asked us, His disciples, to observe, so there had to be some deeper meaning to it), I couldn't quite find one I was able to happily live with myself, until last night, when the last holes in the puzzle were filled in for me (amazingly, after watching an issue of Star Trek's "Deep Space9"), and I'm finally ready to let the world in on my own interpretation of the Lord's prayer - for whatever it's worth (if you've got a better one, feel free to let me know.) Our Father, Who art in Heaven - God is our Father, our Creator, and although, like some say, and in a way it is right, that He is everywhere, His abode - the place where He primarily resides, is not right here with us, on earth, but a better place: heaven. (A circumstance which, according to Revelations 21 will change someday.)

Hallowed be Thy name "There is no other name under heaven given by which we can be saved. I and the Father are one. Whatsoever ye shall ask in My name will be done... (Acts 4:12, Matth.10:30, John 14:13,14). As far as we're concerned, the name of our Father, is Jesus (see also Isa.9:6, Phil.2:9-11). (Shortly before His crucifixion, Jesus said, "Father, glorify Thy name." And an audible voice from heaven answered "I have glorified it, and will glorify it again," as if to say, "in You - Jesus - it is glorified" - see John 12:27-31. "Jehovah" or "Jah" means "I am" or "I am that I am." In John 8:58 Jesus makes it clear that He was - and is that "I am." See also John 1:1-14.) Thy Kingdom come The Kingdom of Heaven isn't here yet, we've got to ask for it to come, invite it, prepare for it & make room for it. We must allow Him and ask Him to introduce His program to replace the "matrix" of the Devil. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven It's already being done in heaven, but not yet down here on earth. We've got to pray for that and put feet to those prayers by being the first to obey Him and implement His will. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses While most of us are very concerned with the first half of that phrase (and our God is not too busy, too great or too important to take care of our physical needs), it's interesting to note that Jesus seems to be putting the second half on the same level of importance. In other words, we need forgiveness of our sins as badly as we need our daily food. ... as we forgive those who trespass against us ...and in order to obtain that vital forgiveness, we must forgive others also. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for Thine is the Kingdom and the power and the glory forever. For many of us, the temptation that the evil one is trying to bring into our lives daily is to give ourselves the glory for whatever we have done, and we should not yield to that evil temptation, but give the glory & credit to Whom it is due, Whose accomplishments are not temporal, like ours, but eternal. Our world may crumble and fade, as does our strength, but His stands forever, and only in Him can we live forever, too. Sometimes we act as if this present world were "the Kingdom" around which everything revolves. After all, we've built it in our own strength (or so we think), and we indulge in our own power and glory. True believers recognize that our own power is futile, even non-existent, that in truth, all power - everything - comes from God, and He's the One Who deserves the glory for it. Amen

That's the way it's got to be. And it shall. Summary: 1.) Our big heavenly "Daddy" - although He lives in Heaven - can hear us, otherwise there'd be not point in this prayer. He has chosen a name, a code word or key by which we can approach and reach Him anytime: Jesus (s.a. 1Tim2:5). 2.) We must make room & prepare for His program to be happening in our lives. It's already running successfully in the 5th dimension. 3.) He supplies our needs, both spiritual & physical (and they're equally important) and one of the major pointers for staying healthy is: forgiveness. 4.) Let's stay on guard not to fall into the temptation of giving ourselves the credit for anything, but always give honor to Whom it is due: He's the Eternal One, and we can only partake in His divinity by accepting that. You better believe it.

Did God Make Man, Or Did Man Make Him Up?

I've briefly written about this before, when I first caught this drift, but there are people who think that the whole concept of the God of the Bible, including the Gospel story about Jesus & Mary, in other words, the entire Jewish and Christian faiths (along with other religions) are a concoction of the Illuminati, the secret planners and makers behind the scenes in the body of politics, in order to mentally enslave mankind. They argue that the story of Jesus & Mary is just another version of the ancient Babylonian goddess Semiramis and her son, who is sent to have been to earth on December 25th, which is why some straight-liner, fundamentalist Christians don't believe in celebrating Christmas, since they believe that it's just an ancient heathen celebration camouflaged as a Christian ceremony. While those Christians might have a point, in that December 25th most likely was not really Jesus' actual birthday (after all, if they didn't even get the year right, how much less likely is it they got the month or the day right?), those afore-mentioned conspiracy freaks, like David Icke and friends like Brian Desborough claim that the whole thing, the Bible in its entirety, and thus all belief in our one God, is a fabrication of evil "reptilians" who have enslaved mankind since the beginning. I think the Illuminati must either be very thankful for guys like David Icke, or paying him a lot of money, for creating an even greater confusion around their mystery than there already is. In reality, Illuminists are a lot more realistic, down-to-earth & everyday type of people than mystery cracks like Icke want to make us believe, and while some or most of them may be working for the side of what we Christians call "the Enemy," and may be subjected to his spirits and direction, many of them are probably doing so totally unbeknownst to them, and with a lot of "good" intentions. Although it's also quite probably that they invented this whole scheme of claiming that Christianity, Judaism and monotheism per se is just one of their inventions.

After all, the Devil claims the credit for a lot of things he's not really responsible for, like sex (since he obviously got many to believe that it's something evil, and thus coming from him), and there were days when he got many church Christians to believe that musical instruments were his invention, just because they were being used in worldly entertainment establishments like saloons, etc. The only thing I give the Devil credit for is being the greatest liar there is, and the only reason he manages to cheat everybody big-time and have a lot of people totally deluded and blinded is because he's a fairly decent imitator, and if he sees God doing anything decent, he tries to copy it. By comparison to the real thing, his copies are lousy, but they're still good enough to impress us dumb folks living in the material world. Probably the majority of Christians would call me a heretic, but thankfully, some have open enough hearts, minds and channels of communication with God to realize that Heaven is not a joint run by 3 dudes, as in guys or masculine personages, as commonly perceived: "Uncle God, Uncle Holy Ghost and Uncle Jesus," but since God has made physical things to be an illustration of spiritual truths, and earthly families thankfully (usually!) don't consist of two papas and a child, but a mother and a father, etc., and since it says right in the first chapter of the Bible, "In his own image created He them,... male and female," (Gen.1:27), it is quite reasonable to believe that the Holy Ghost is actually not a "He," but a "She." We may not have known that, but I'm pretty sure the Devil has known that all along, and thus created his little counterfeit "trinity" in his Babylonian and Egyptian counterfeit religions (which again, he claims now that Christianity is just another version of - true to his motto, "if ya tell a lie, tell a biiig one!"). One should not give the old punk that much credit for anything too quickly. After all, he's nothing much but an imitator, a copy cat. Pretty soon, he's even going to send his own "son" to earth, his imitation "christ", whom the Bible calls the Antichrist. The Bible even says that the true Christ would not return until his diabolical imitation had been around (see 2.Thessalonians 2:1-12), pretending to be God. After all, He wouldn't want to miss out on the final showdown to expose the fake & show the world Who really is the Real Thing, plus, to put an end to his ptiful reign and attempt at Utopia personally (2.Thes.2:8) at that event the Bible calls the Battle of Armageddon (Rev.16:12-14, 16-21, 17:14, 19:11-21). Giving the Devil and his ilk too much credit is like living in the "Matrix" (as in the epic with Keanu Reeves), without seeing the Greater Picture (as in BIG) around it (ever wonder how Neo ever got his supernatural powers even outside the Matrix, in the real world in the sequels?). Don't limit your focus and vision to the puny, finite concoction of Lucifer's plan for the world, however impressive they may be (after all, the Bible calls him "the god of this world (2.Cor.4:4), but look beyond, at the Big Picture, that's engulfing the Devil's matrix and everything, way beyond what we may now call history or the world... The "End of the world as we know it" will only be The Beginning. Did God make man, or did man make God up? As far as the Bible, and myself are concerned, if you've got any brains at all, the answer is evident (Ps.14:1). Try to figure out the probability of all the miracles needed to keep you alive with every breath you take & every beat of your heart

to just be happening by accident. Try to seriously figure it out, without cheating, and you won't have any doubts anymore about Who made who, either.

IT WAS NOTHING, REALLY!

December 11, 2006

When I was a young teenager, I came across a book by Science Fiction author Theodore Sturgeon, "Sturgeon is alive and well," a collection of some pretty far-out sci-fi stories - not the space travel kind, but fairly down-to-earth ones, such as the story about an inventor who discovers the power of nothing while sitting on the toilet, entitled, "It was nothing, really." The inventor in the story develops a powerful force field out of the very substance of nothing, which sounds very much like what the new physics tells us: We used to think all the energy was in the particles of the atom; now it seems that the energy is, in fact, in the space between the particles! I used to think that air was pretty much like nothing: I took it for granted, since I couldn't really touch it or see it or feel it, and I'm sure many of us are not really aware of the miracle that's happening with every breath we take. Yet, when a space craft re-enters the atmosphere, the astronauts encounter the fact that air isn't nothing at all, but fairly solid, compared to the nothingness they just came from, in outer space. It starts to dawn on one then, why, when God created the sky, He called it firmament (Genesis 1:6,7), indicating that the stuff He made it of was firm and relatively solid, compared to all the nothing, that empty space between the planets, the 'particles' of the universe... Some bright guys, like Mark McCutcheon (I mentioned him before), are finding out that maybe the forces we knew in physics aren't really separate forces at all... maybe there's more to all that nothing, all that empty space between the particles of the atoms and the universe, than we know.... Maybe it hasn't even dawned on us yet how little, how nothing we know... One of the best Christians songs ever written, from a time way before Christian music ever became as huge as it is now, is "Oxygen" by Richard Page, in which he describes the Lord as being our oxygen. How fitting and appropriate, because with every breath we take, God proves His love for us, or, as Richard Rohr puts it in "Everything Belongs" (a book I can wholeheartedly recommend to any truth seeker, which has not only triggered the inspiration for this blog, but also quite a few of my forth-coming songs): "We're already totally in the presence of God. What's absent is awareness. Little do we realize that God is maintaining us in existence with every breath we take. As we take another it means that God is choosing us now and now and now..." He also says that God is hiding in the physical world, which is something David Berg, founder of The Family International, also taught, and I was able to confirm by personal experience many times. I personally suspect that the place God chooses to hide specially - perhaps His favorite 'hiding place,' is nothingness, that empty space between the particles, where all the energy lies, just as He chooses the little, humble and 'invisible' people, the 'nothings' and 'nobodies' in this world to do the great works that nobody else wants to do. I don't know who said it first, David Berg or Eric Idle, or yet another inspired thinker: "God made the world out of nothing and He hung it on nothing. Hangs pretty good, doesn't it?" So, nothing

seems to be a pretty trustworthy substance, because God seems to be in it. After all, if everything is made from nothing, and nothing is our origin, than maybe there's more to nothing than we've been able to fathom thus far...

The Christmas-Pentecost Connection December 21, 2006

I just read a quote in the December edition of the "Link," one of the magazines our Family produces, which triggered a train of thought about the connection between Christmas and Pentecost. Christmas is the first incident we celebrate related to Christ's coming to earth, and Pentecost is the last. In other words, Pentecost is in a sense the end of the story that Christmas begins to tell: At Christmas we have a handful of rather poor people, a carpenter from Nazareth with his pregnant wife (whom he almost didn't marry because it wasn't his child she was bearing, had God personally not encouraged him to go ahead), a handful of shepherds, and a bunch of animals. Okay, there were the 3 kings, but they came later, and all in all, it was a bit of a motley crew gathered in that stable there in Palestine. Pentecost - well, since some folks can't really pin down what exactly Pentecost is or was in the first place - was traditionally the Jewish feast of the harvest, which happened to be the occasion at which the Holy Spirit was poured out among the disciples of Jesus in Jerusalem after His resurrection. The result of that outpouring was the beginning of the Christian church: 3000 new souls won on that day, and 5000 more a few days later (Acts 2:41, 4:4). In other words, the seed which God had sown by sending down that little baby on the first Christmas in that shaggy stable was blossoming forth into it's first bloom, and exploding with fruit, on the day of Pentecost. The day of Pentecost also resulted in the greatest and purest form of Communism ever known to man, which Karl Marx pitifully tried to imitate in his idea, and we've seen the results of that. If you don't believe it, read Acts 2:44,45 yourself. This distribution of wealth, over time, also brought the transition for many people from lack, want and poverty to abundance, apart from the spiritual riches which were poured out (you can find the gifts of the Spirit listed in 1.Corinthians 12, and the 13th chapter dedicated to the greatest of them alone, and the fruits of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22, 23). Most people aren't even aware of the gifts of the Spirit nowadays, nor of the spiritual riches that have been poured on us through Christ's coming, but instead we're extremely preoccupied with the physical abundance God has blessed us with (or at least the ability to obtain some of that abundance via loans & credit), heaping on our children and loved ones such an abundance of material things, that there's hardly ever time for them to ponder or grasp the spiritual meaning of Christmas. As far as I can see it, the material and physical appearance of Jesus in Bethlehem points, 34 years later very clearly in the direction God wanted to lead us through Jesus: to the Spirit. Jesus said during His lifetime: "The flesh is good for nothing, it's the Spirit that gives life" (John 6:63). And isn't that the very lesson that God is trying to teach us throughout the Bible, from Moses and the Pharaoh, Joshua and Jericho, over David and Goliath, on to the greatest victory ever through a seeming defeat on the cross?

Yet some people don't seem to get the point. The wall that today desecrates Jesus' birth place we so fondly commemorate during this season, is one silent, terrifying testimony to that fact.

Credit to Whom Credit Is Due

December 29, 2006 Let's face it: a lot of people are pretty confused, and don't really have a clue what their lives are supposed to be all about. In my opinion, that's not only because a lot of them refuse to acknowledge the One Who put them here in the first place and has promised to guide us with His eyes (providing we'd ever care to look in His direction - see Psalm 32:8), but also because they fail to recognize their enemy in this battle of life. - A very subtle & smart enemy, certainly, whose greatest trick and surest tactic of victory was to convince most of us that he doesn't even exist. With those he did not manage to get them to swallow that, he uses a different tactic: he claims the credit over practically everything God created: He has claimed the credit for sex, having people believe that it's a sin, although it's evident that sex is an institution created by God Himself, since it was God, not the Devil, Who spoke when He gave His first commandment to man ever: "Be fruitful and multiply!" He has claimed the credit for the stars, as if it was he who made them, instead of God, at least one should think so, by the way most Christians are scared stiff of astrology. It's true, we're not supposed to worship the stars, but do you know anybody who does? What most people don't know, is that even the star signs have a godly origin, dating - according to the Jewish historian Josephus - all the way back to Adam or Enoch, and they tell the wonderful story of the gospel ever since mankind began, in every language of every culture (see Ps.19:1-4). The devil has claimed the credit for the entire invisible, spiritual realm, which is also called the spirit world, although God Himself is a Spirit and the Father of spirits, his angels are supposedly innumerable, and yet most Christians picture Heaven to be some vast empty space run by 3 guys commandeering a few angels, vastly outnumbered by all the evil spirits and demons that make up most of that evil place called the "spirit world." If they would read their Bibles a little more faithfully, they'd find out an entirely different description. What do you think happens to a saved person when they die? What do you think happened to all the millions of saints who have passed on? Are they all sleeping or floating around on a private cloud, playing their harps quietly? Or could it be that God would give them the desires of their hearts to continue to be of service to Him in the eternal Realm, helping Him to win this great battle over the souls of man? Our souls have gone lost, because we have allowed the devil to cheat us out of them with his lies. We're even afraid of ourselves. In reality, we belong to God, He has called us by our names, and He knows who we are, and He's the One Who can tell us who we are. He can tell us which way to go, and He can tell us a lot about ourselves and our fellow humans, and He has made lots of help available for us, yes, even from that oh so dreaded spirit world! And there's nothing He loves to do more than to make us happy by letting us enjoy the beauty of His creation, including the multiplying business, that some people so self-righteously denounce as

something nasty, only to be caught somewhere with their pants down in the company of someone they are certainly not married to, as has happened to some... Why do we do all that to ourselves? Why don't we give credit to Whom credit is due? Why don't we give the credit to God, along with a whole bunch of thanks, for all the great things He made for us, to help us go through life's battles with a little greater ease, and much more joy and happiness than we sometimes grant ourselves? When are we going to stop giving the devil the credit for everything God has created? When are we going to wake up to what he's really up to? Yes, we're supposed to be sober and vigilant, but most people don't have a clue about the way the enemy of their souls is working. They don't have a clue about how he tries to trick us out of using all the help that God would so willingly give us. Most Christians don't even believe that God talks anymore. "We've got the Bible now, that says all there is to say." They put out brochures that say that God doesn't talk to people through dreams anymore, because now we've got the Bible. In other words, from the moment St.John put down his pen and wrote the last word of the book of revelation, God shut up and every single dream people have had since has been inspired by the devil. What baloney. Well, if that's your religion, if that's the kind of regimentation you need in order to find the kind of love Jesus asked us, no, commanded us to have for God and each other, it's your choice... I'll be most gladly, happily, vibrantly and ecstatically enjoying a living - real live, talking, moving, acting - interacting, and yes, even - blasphemy of all blasphemies - sexy God. I'll see you in heaven & would be glad to help you make up for all you missed out on in this life!

Just a Little Reminder Jan.26, 2007

In "Mere Christianity," C. S. Lewis said, "Really great moral teachers never introduce new moralities: 'People need to be reminded more often than they need to be instructed.' The real job of every moral teacher is to keep on bringing us back, time after time, to the old simple principles which we are all so anxious not to see..." Even so, I'm finding out that the gist of the lessons the Great Master Teacher has been trying to bring home to me for the past months, if not years, was in essence laid down already 2000 years ago. For once, there's the ever returning them of "Without Me ye can do nothing," (John 15:5), and then there is the equally important truth that whatever we do or may think to be accomplishing, without love, it's worth nothing (see 1Corinthians 13). What makes these old doctrines sound strange is, of course, the sad fact that so few have ever really managed to live them, and it gives religious groups some strange, weird, esoteric or "New Age" slant to be claiming that these ancient values are very well to be expected of us to be put into practice. What's odd to most people about it, is that it's something they cannot achieve by any efforts of their own, but rather, the total "anti-effort:" a letting go of all personal effort

(excepting the one to obey), ambition and ulterior motives, and just "let go and let God" do through us what we humanly can't. Availing ourselves of the same, supernatural power through which every true man or woman of God in both, the Old and New testaments did whatever they accomplished for God, sounds so strange, so weird, so sectarian to us rational thinkers in the age of the peak of man's glorious achievement, where we've constructed machines to do practically every human task for us (except eating, sleeping, making love and going to the toilet... but they're probably working on it), without having relieved one ounce of the suffering humanity has known since its early fall. It sounds preposterous in modern man's ears that God would be expecting of us to believe in the same child-like simple way that out forefathers did. They had the Holy Spirit, we have television, tanks and cars. They had miracles, we get Pat Robertson and George Bush... aaand, of course, the almighty (?) dollar. That seems to be the accepted fate of 21st century humanity, and anyone saying, "You keep your trinkets, your politicians & TV-religion and your money, just give me those good old lasting values from the Bible," strikes the vast majority as outrageous, blasphemous and treacherous. Although it could hardly be deemed so, especially since no one wishing to return to the standard of biblical faith would be blaspheming the true God, only the established religious System, which are as far apart as the Rockefeller church in New York and John the Baptist's coat. And as to who is truly being treacherous, I suppose only time will tell. Nor can it be said that our modern "do-it-yourself" type of religion has anything really new about it, since it originated with Cain, and has been observed by tower-of-Babel constructors, goldencalf carvers and temple vendors ever since. The old way of truth just sounds so weird and so damnable to us because it still goes against our same old greedy and selfish grind. The Devil doesn't like Jesus any better than he did 2000 years ago, nor do the followers of the one get along any better with the followers of the other. What has improved, though, is the art of disguise. It's more difficult than ever to tell who's really a real follower of Christ. In fact, without the supernatural gift of the Holy Spirit called discernment, it's hopeless. That's one more reason why we need that supernatural help from above that make us sound so strange, so weird, so esoteric. If you want to look up what other gifts or weapons God equipped His people with in order to combat the Enemy's forces in this world, even back in St. Paul's day, read the 12th chapter of 1Corinthians. It will lead you right to the most powerful weapon of all, described in a chapter all on its own, and we're right back where we started from: All you need is love, and it's the only thing that matters, and trying to do anything without Love, which is God, is useless... (see, once again, John 15:5). So, just a little reminder - not as much for anyone out there as for myself - of one of the major lessons the school of life is all about. For without becoming good learners in the first place, we'll never manage to be good teachers...

Of Kids and Kings Feb.7, 2007 (Unpublished)

Kids what makes them tic nowadays? Whats going through their heads? Why are they acting so weird? Well, this is going to be a hard one to swallow for some, but if youre wondering why any person between the age of 10 and 20 (sometimes older, depending on the level of maturity, which seems to be setting in a bit later with each passing decade), doesnt show any remote sign of even vague interest in you, your person, or anybody of your age group for that matter, it is most likely so that, indeed, hes not interested. In fact, one might go as far as to say that for him you barely count as another human being. (Unless perhaps, youre his parent, and his weekly allowance or permission to go to a rock concert depend on you there are exceptions, thank God!) While probably less than a century ago, the value of a human being was estimated by their experience, their achievements in life, and thus, honor was bestowed upon the aged (since they had experienced and achieved more than the average 10 year old), things have shifted to where your only 2 qualifications for being a bonafide member of society, worthy of any attention from youth at all, are your age (above 20 youre old, above 30 youre dead), or money. Anything goes, if youre stinking rich. In my opinion, theres a reason for this phenomenon, of young people categorically tossing adults into their mental trash can or extinct drawer, and its probably one of the most outrageous conspiracy theories youll ever hear (you may call it the dino-theory, if you wish). What is it that kids have in common? They all like the same stuff: basically anything they sling at you on TV commercials, music television channels, or anything thats being pushed as hip among their own circles, be it via the internet or face-to-face. Usually, that includes a lot of things that adults dont like, since they tend to be a little more stubborn when it comes to developing personal taste (no matter how many times they see Madonna dancing around on TV to one of her tunes, they may still think its plain ugly, what theyre seeing. But of course, Madonna gives a shoot, because she knows its not you whos buying her song, its junior.) Now, in olden times, the establishment would have encouraged for our kids to change that sort of me first attitude and revert to the original mode of respect & honor to whom honors due (then again, with some of the geezers running our countries, you cant blameem for not respecting them, either). But the 21st century has done away with stuff like those old morals, because the only thing that is of interest to those who make the rules, is money (at least our kids like their peers as well), and since they know that most grown-ups arent going to buy any old trash they sell (at least not forever), they target the kids, and thus, they have become the KINGS, according to the business proverb, the customer is king. Wait a minute, youll say, whats this garbage about those who make the rules? Its us who make the rules! After all, we live in a democratic society! Yeah, right. You can call it whatever you like, but if Adolf Hitler would have had the same power over the German youth that the Neo-cons, what Michael Moore calls Corporate America (and Id call Corporate World) and George Bush Senior called the New World Order, then hed have won the war. Its not the name (democracy) that counts, its what actually is happening, being put into effect, and the power it exerts over the masses.

Nowadays, theyre not killing Jews, but for this theyll keep you apart for being different in any form or shape at all. You either play the game, or youre a loser. By the time this generation will have woken up to that fact, it will probably be too late again, just as it was for Nazi Germany.

Lonely World Feb.12, 2007

I'm finding myself lately having to break out of a box, a mental pattern of perception, which, I'm afraid, quite a lot of us are prone to. Especially when we're younger, we tend to only seek to impress a certain group of people, usually the age group that is the same as ours (or slightly above, when we were young teens), and later in life it becomes the prestigious, those who, we figure, might have something to offer to us, people whose acquaintance we benefit from. Sometimes it's as if that group, our mental "target group," is the only one that even exists for us. There may be other humans, like our parents, teachers, etc., but they're either necessary evils or a downright nuisance and pain in the behind. I dare say that in this day & age, where the media have mass-hypnotized us into thinking what is acceptable and what is not in a manner that would have let Hitler grow pale with envy, it is a rare youngster who doesn't care at all whether the person they talk to is "hip," in the accepted age group, or at least somewhere near the accepted range. What is really shocking for me, though, is, how old I've had to become in order to even let it dawn on me just how much this kind of group think had affected me, and to realize just how sickening it was. On the other hand, I'm grateful, because I probably wouldn't have been mature enough to handle the shock at a younger age, the shock that you get when you realize just how widespread this game has become. We used to think that only snobs or racists would act in discriminating ways toward their slightly different fellowmen, but - gosh, that was in the 70s, maybe the 80s. Waking up in the 21st century means that all of a sudden those who were discriminated and looked down on in the past have developed their own snobbishness, their own classconsciousness, their own Nazi-ism, and just about every group tends to discriminate every other group. You must give the Devil credit for being one hell of a smart b to have achieved this feat! Especially, because he managed to make this very game most popular among God's own people - or those who deem themselves such. The end result of all this is, that the world is becoming a lonelier place by the hour, as there are ever more little groups developing who will discriminate all the other ones, but especially those who don't belong to any of them, those who would just like to be themselves, & give a damn about clichs & cliques.

May God have mercy and turn our hearts of stone into real ones of flesh & blood, so that we may once again be able to hear our neighbor's heart cry and be able to look him in the eye and see a living soul there, instead of trying to analyze: "Which group do you belong to? Are you acceptable? Hip or un-cool? Can I take the risk to be seen associating myself with you or not?..." Or, "Is s/he a potential customer or going to benefit me in some other way?" I'm sure grateful for those I have come across in my life who have accepted me for the totally un-hip and un-cool dude that I am, and I'm looking forward to returning that favor to many a poor lost soul who doesn't know where the heck they belong in this lost & lonely world...

(More on) Popularity Feb.12, 2007

Throughout the ages, there have been those who betrayed the church - like Judas, for which body of true believers didn't have a few of their own? But there were also those whom the church betrayed. Paul, for example, was a classical case, of an outcast of the very early church - the one we deem the purest - who, because of his different way, doubtlessly his former hostility, never really was full accepted by the original early church in Jerusalem, in spite of the fact (or was it even because of it?) that he was the first to truly fulfill Jesus' call and commandment to go into all the world (not just Judea and surroundings), preach the gospel to every creature (not just the Jews) and make disciples of all nations. Of course, the list would become endless if we were to follow up throughout history and count those who were betrayed and forsaken by their own church for various reasons, because they wouldn't fit in. Some, like Luther, simply started their own movement, outside of the confines of the old. Others, like Father Damien, the leper priest of Hawaii, lived with their fate (and their church) until they died - some martyrs at the hands of their own brothers and sisters, cursed in their lifetimes and declared saints post-mortem. How is it that most of the true prophets, like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Moses, David and even the Messiah Himself, had to suffer persecution, disdain and contempt from their own people, their own brethren? It must be that popularity - in God's eyes, even popularity among His own people, must really not be where it's at. It must really be so, as Paul said, that "All who would live godly (piously) in Christ Jesus must suffer persecution," and that, quite often, at the hands of their very own people. Some had their temporary bouts and phases of popularity, but when the final crunch came, they were either thrown in dungeons, chased out of town, or crucified. Amazingly, we observe this shocking lack of acceptance of genius not only in the field of religion, but in the arts as well, if you look at the lives of such great composers as Mozart or Haendel.

Haendel, as a German in England, got hell from the established church of his day for his attempts to put the gospel to music and make it accessible for the common people. He lived most of his life on the verge of poverty and had to go to Ireland for his works to be heard. We all know that Mozart never lived to enjoy his popularity. So, then, the price of real anointing seems to be that you hardly ever get to enjoy the credit for it in this life... Maybe that is what ensures that what you've got will also remain true anointing? Maybe it is to make sure that the credit goes to the One Who gives the anointing in the first place... In any case, it seems - contrary to all we ever thought and wished to think - that popularity isn't necessarily any proof for quality nor genuine talent or spirituality. It rather seems like the opposite.

Pre-Tribulation Rapture? Feb.22, 07

Most of our Christian friends believe in the Pre-Tribulation Rapture*; in other words, they're convinced that Jesus is going to pick them up (to Heaven) before the 3 year period of the Antichrist's reign after having broken the "Holy Covenant," the peace treaty among the world's leading religions (Judaism, Islam and Christianity), the quarrels among which are presently the greatest remaining threat to world peace. *(Rapture: also referred to as The 2 nd Coming of Christ.) One friend told me on the phone yesterday, "I don't need all that persecution & stuff." She simply chose to believe the easy-way-out myth in spite of the hard in-the-face evidence from the Bible (which most obviously prefer to skip in their readings). What a bunch of wishful thinkers mainstream Christians are. I think it shows that our friend was wrong: If there's anything Christians need, it IS the great Tribulation, and the Bible tells us why: In the first description of the 3 year period of the Great Tribulation, given to us by the prophet Daniel in Daniel 12, we find one of God's purposes for this, doubtlessly most troublesome time of world history: "Many shall be purified and made white, and tried" (Dan.12:10). I believe the church still needs to be purged thoroughly from its lukewarmness, its infatuation with materialism and the world (as in: the System) per se.) Mentioning and quoting from the book of Daniel Jesus, in Matthew 24:29-31 makes it totally plain that "immediately AFTER the tribulation of those days shall ... appear the sign of the Son of man (Jesus) in heaven. And ... His angels... shall gather together His elect (chosen ones)..."

Some Pre-Tribbers claim that He was referring here to the Battle of Armageddon, but if this is not a clear description of the Rapture, I don't know what is. Incidentally, we have Him mention here (verse 31) the "great sound of the trumpet," which we find again in three other references to the Rapture: In his first description of the Rapture, Paul tells us, in 1.Corinthians 15:52-53: "I show you a mystery: We shall not all sleep (die), but we shall all be changed. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed." In his first letter to the Thessalonians (chapter 4:16, 17) Paul writes about this terrific incident, which marks the end of the world as we know it: "For the Lord Himself shall descend from Heaven with a shout, and with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with Him in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air." In the Book of Revelation we find out what Paul was referring to as the "last trump" in 1Cor.15:53." When the Lamb of God (Jesus) opens the 7 seals of the future in John's visions, upon opening the 7th seal, 7 angels appear with trumpets, each heralding another cataclysmic Endtime event (see Rev.5-10). When finally the 7th angel sounds his trumpet, we read: "In the days of the 7th angel, when he shall begin to sound, they mystery of God should be finsihed, as He hath declared to His servants, the prophets" (Rev.10:7). Finito. In other words, there won't be another 3 years of world history left to go, but it'll be all over now, baby blue! All that awaits earth then is the wrath of God, followed by the Battle of Armageddon, initiating the tousand years of Christ's reign on Earth. But there are two more indications of why Jesus won't come back before the Tribulation: In 2Thessalonians 2:1-11 Paul cautions us not to believe the fairy tale that Jesus could come back any moment (which most Preachers will tell you, while telling you of their new 10 year building project of their new church in the next breath), but that Christ could not return unless there should have been a great falling away from the faith first, and the "son of perdition" (the antichrist) should be revealed, sitting in the temple, proclaiming to be God. We know that the AC (antichrist) will only sit in the temple after breaking the Holy Covenant (see Daniel 11:30,31). But Paul even goes as far to explain why many Christians choose to believe the easy-way-out fairy-tale, in verses 10 and 11: "Because they received not the love of the truth...God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie." Some folks are simply not that fond of the truth, and rather settle for the much easier to believe lies the Enemy is handing us. Finally, we find the church (church= "ecclesia"= the called-out ones) of Christ in Revelation 12, not being lifted entirely out of this world during the 1260 days or 42 months of the Tribulation, but merely brought to a safe hiding place in the wilderness. We also find the two faithful witnesses in chapter 11 prophesying for the full length of the Tribulation.

Seems to me like there's no easy way out, folks! It's natural not to want to go through such a time, it's natural to be scared, but that's why we've got supernatural means to acquire a supernatural faith to rise above our natural tendencies to be cowards and wishful thinkers... In my opinion, with all this evidence pointing toward a Post-Tribulation Rapture, it would sound a lot wiser to be prepared for it, as our good old Dad always used to say: "Better have it and not need it, than need it and not have it." Better get some faith today and not be making in your pants tomorrow when you might find the Antichrist at your door and Jesus refusing to come any earlier than He always said He would.

Spirit Feb.17, 07
We're all trying to find our way Home. At least the seekers among us are, those who've always known this wasn't home. Any clue where it might be, our real Home? Let's see; if it's not of this, physical world, and if the Head and Principal Character of our true Home World is a Spirit (John 4:24), might it be very daring to assume that our Home lies in the Spirit? What some call the Spirit World? Just because we can't see spirit, we assume that it's somehow inferior to what we've presently got. But that is just as silly as assuming that US Dollars are worth more than British Pounds, just because you've never seen a Pound. Or better, that your dollars are worth more than diamonds, just because you've never seen any. Just the fact that we can't see the Spirit World, doesn't make it inferior to ours at all. In fact, There, they can see both worlds and move from one to the other. Doubtlessly, our dimension is the inferior one. To assume anything else would be as ridiculous as a declaration of war by Liechtenstein on the United States. We just keep treating it as inferior, because that's the way we treat anything we don't understand and that is strange to us. That's why we treated God's very Son that way, and all His emissaries He ever sent, from the very first prophet, even until now. It says about Jesus, that "He came into His own," (in fact, John had just finished describing how the world had been made by Him), "but His own received Him not" (John 1:10, 11). The fact of the matter is, the physical world is a product of the Spiritual World, since He that made it, is a Spirit Himself, and dwells primarily in the Spirit World. The Bible says, there will come a time when He will come to live with us, along with His heavenly City, down here, on a newly formed and re-created earth, so, sooner or later, the veil that now parts the physical from the spiritual will be done away with. In other words, we might as well stop sooner to treat the Spirit World, its inhabitants, and those communicating with them and its emissaries to our realm

as if we're never going to have anything to do with it, just because right now we can't see it. We might as well get used to the fact, that that's where we're going. We might as well get ready for it, get ready for the Spirit. It's really not that strange, since we're already spending one third of our time there, namely when we're dreaming. And as far as the dark side of the story is concerned, the bad spirits, we don't have to be afraid of them, either, if we're a child of God, which we can become very easily by accepting Jesus as our Savior. In fact, if you look around, it seems like they're rapidly taking over this place, anyhow, & pretty soon they're going to have taken over this world. John says that he saw the Devil and his angels being cast down to the earth, and that it would become a short, but very woeful time. I'd say, that's another reason to make sure you're on the right side, and in tune with the "Man Upstairs," the Boss & Master of this whole game, and apply for some help from His side in order to make it through that coming dark period. In any case, the Spirit World is nothing to be afraid of, since its our true Home, or true Origin, and our destination, the place we're all inevitably going. Might as well get used to it. You don't have to be scared of it, because God already rules there. He may not have yet fully taken charge over our world yet, since He wants to teach all mankind (and the entire universe, for that matter) a lesson we won't forget, but in the Spirit World, He's already the undoubted Master, and has always been. So, you're in good hands, and you're being well protected by your Maker, His angels, and all your brothers & sisters on the other side... no reason to be afraid of them. In fact, if you're still afraid, you need to ask yourself, where that fear comes from, and why it is there. It could be that the Devil is trying to stop you from something very important. God is a Spirit. Yet you can trust Him, right? That's what's most important. You don't have to be afraid of spirits, because God is the greatest of all spirits, and if you've got Him on your side (by putting yourself on His), then, what is there to be afraid of? God is also Love, and perfect love casts out fear. It also says that "God has not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, of love, and of a sound mind." (2.Tim.1:7) So, if you're driven by a spirit of fear, then that spirit is not of Him, and you should seek to be filled by His Spirit of power (what greater power is there than His?), of love (which casts out fear) and of a sound mind (get rid of all the fog the Enemy of your soul is trying to create with his fears, worries and doubts!)... Like myself, you might be surprised to find all that you've been looking for in your life, the happiness, the love, the fulfillment youre inwardly seeking, in a place where you never expected it to be: flesh can satisfy flesh, the carnal can satisfy the carnal, but only spirit can satisfy spirit, that aching, yearning void inside the depths of our souls, which God created and reserved for Himself. "There's a God-shaped hole in all of us," as a song says, and since God is a Spirit, it's a hole that can only be filled by Spirit. Nothing else will be able to fill it. Let that inner you, that dwells inside your body, find its way Home, where it belongs, and where the Father awaits you like the prodigal son, with arms wide open!

What's "The Lust of the Flesh" Anyways?

March 9, 07

Some churches don't realize what damage they're inflicting on people with their sanctimonious hypocrisy, and they don't realize the damage they're inflicting on God's image. We have friends who are having to deal with the matter of sexuality in their churches, and the outcome is usually pitiful. If a woman has been married once, their church forbids them to marry again. Condemned to a life in solitude. By whose authority? It's true that St. Paul recommends for women who leave their husbands, not to get married again (1 Cor.7:11), but what if the husband leaves her or doesn't accept the teachings of Christ? And what about some of the other recommendations Paul makes, that are so blatantly ignored by church people? Like "Let no man seek his own, but every man another's wealth" or his reminder of Jesus' admonition not to judge others (1 Cor.10:24, Mt.7:1, Rom.2:1-3)? If we stubbornly want to stick to every recommendation Paul every made, women are going to have to cover their heads while praying, as well: Don't forget your hat when you go to church! Otherwise, shave your heads! That's what Paul also says (1 Cor.11:5,6)! So, why is everybody so picky about making sure that other people keep all the things Paul said about sex, but ignore all the other things at the same time? It's so easy to make sex the culprit for everything and the epitome of sin in order to divert from the real problems of the church. If a woman expresses any type of sexual desire, she's being frowned upon and told she needs to get rid of her demons. Where's all this hogwash coming from? No. It's not from the Bible! If those ultra-pious, holier-than-thou-and-everyone-else, too-scared-to-be- touched Christians would pause long enough in their hellfire and brimstone platitudes to really read their Bibles, they would find a truly different God indeed. A God Who, instead of being accused of being opposed to sexuality, in fact not only created it, but also made it clear and plain over and over again, that He intended mankind to use it as well. What was the first commandment He ever gave to man? "Be fruitful and multiply!" (Genesis

1:28). And He didn't only tell Adam and Eve, before they sinned (and that sin didn't have anything to do with sex as much as with pseudo-intellectual head-stuffing), but He repeated it to Noah and his sons, to Abraham, to Jacob. I challenge any anti-sex pulpit preacher (before he's going to get caught in public with another male prostitute) to have a look at the language God uses in the description of His relation to His church, for instance, in the 16th chapter of Ezekiel! Doesn't sound like the prudish God to me there, that they're trying to sell their congregations in order to exert power and control over them! Let's have a look at the real sin, shall we? The word "Lust" that's being used in the New Testament (for the Old Testament doesn't bear any resemblance to todays religious anti-sex bigotry in Christianity, with God telling one of His prophets to marry a whore, another to walk around naked, allowing His kings and leaders to have multiple wives, etc. Read the Song of Solomon, if you don't believe me, or the book of Ruth of Esther!) comes from the Greek word for "desire, longing." Now, that's traditionally, automatically being slanted to give it a sexual connotation. But sexual desire is not the only sin or desire that's giving God a hard time. It's probably the least of all evils that men - especially supposedly pious men - let loose on mankind. As one theologian so aptly put it, there's total strictness when it comes to "thou shalt not commit adultery," but we have found ways around the commandment "thou shalt not kill" in manifold ways. Just look at the cheap excuses George W. is giving for his holocaust in Iraq! And if you let him, he'll march into Iran like Hitler into Poland! It seems that some people's lust is for power! Another much greater evil than sex seems to be greed and avarice! Others fall prey to the need to deceive themselves as others, simply because they don't care much about the truth. Fear lets us live out of the pursuit of safety and caring for that outer shell of ours, neglecting our souls, failing to trust God for all things. Yet others constantly avoid confronting life's dark sides, they can't take things seriously, because they're addicted to fun & pleasure, or palin too lazy to deal with things. And how about that pride (as in attention junkies and popularity hunters), self-righteousness, that need, that untamed addiction to always put yourself above other people? "Oh, no, I'm not like those filthy, sinning unbelievers! (I'm getting my job done in the dark!") One can plainly see that "the flesh" consists of far more than that one part that made to be the culprit by the prudish party. What was it the Mothers of Invention sang? "What's the ugliest part of your body?... I think it's your mind!" (See Romans 8:7). It wasn't the sinners, the adulterers, the publicans, wine-bibbers and harlots who sold Jesus out to the Romans to be nailed on the cross, but the self-righteous, hypocritical religious authorities of His day, just as the same Pharisaical types crucify their own flocks to this very day in order to be able to fleece them! If you really want to know where all that sickening prudery is coming from, read this compilation of resources on the subject of Christianity and Sex. The "Sex is sin" mantra is another political master stroke of the Devil, right next to the "theory" of Evolution, only that it's a bit older yet.

There was nothing wrong with Adam and Eve's nakedness until after they had eaten of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (they had already known good), which evidently changed their perception drastically. It's not sex that is the result of sin, it's your warped perception of things! Your sickening, selfrighteous extensions of your own holier-than-thou egos which you try to sell to your flocks as "God," just so you can enslave them, exert control over them and have them come back every Sunday to make sure they won't lose their Salvation - withholding from them the truth that they can't ever lose their Salvation in the first place! Thus giving them eternal insecurity, instead of peace and trust! The sad thing about it is that you're making the rest of the world - those who are too smart to swallow your lies -sick of a God Who would be so cruel to equip mankind with sexual organs, only to forbid them to ever use them. It doesn't compute with intelligent people. That's why Christianity is about to meet its demise. At least that hollow, tainted shell you dare to call by His name is, and Jesus isn't going to come and pick you up before it's going to happen, either! The rest of the world has dug long ago that what you're trying to sell them is baloney! They listen to their bodies! They look at nature - including their bodies - and see that it is "good," not evil, as you try to have them believe! It may not be "very good" as in the beginning, before the knowledge of evil warped our minds, but it's still, basically "good," and no worries, He's going to fix it again and make it "very good" in time. I'm not saying that the major token of our manlihood has never gotten us in trouble. But I daresay it would even be half as important to all of us, and only a fraction as dangerous, if you religious, pious and prudish ignorants of the true God hadn't made it such a big no-no to begin with! And it's by far not the greatest evil around. Not nearly as bad as what your politicians are pulling off every night on the news. Not nearly as bad as the stench of all that hypocrisy! When are you going to give the world a break? Probably never, voluntarily. I reckon the price is just too high. Giving up all that power and pride. It's humbling to bare yourself before another, and get down to the nitty-gritty of what God commanded us to do in Genesis 1:28. Probably too humbling for some. But don't legislate self-righteousness! You're causing way more damage than you're aware of! "Christ is become of no effect unto you whosoever of you are justified by the law; ye are fallen from grace" (Galatians 4:7).

A New Covenant May 14, 07

I'm coming to the conclusion - not without the usual, probably considered highly heretical input from above - that another monumental change is happening in our era, similar to when Christ walked on earth 2000 years ago in order to establish a new covenant between God and men. The old covenant (testament) had been between Him and the physical descendants of one man, Abraham, more specifically, the branch of the descendants of his son Isaac, also called the Jews. That covenant also roughly lasted 2000 years, until that race proved to be unworthy of the right to the title "the people of God," or His exclusive representatives. After Christ died - simultaneously with the Passover lambs that were being prepared by every pious Jew around the world, and embodying the very symbolism of each one of them, yet without most of them recognizing this fact, and the temple veil was supernatural rent in two to reveal to the world that the arc of the covenant wasn't there anymore (by the way, you can stop looking for it; the Bible tells us where it is in Rev.), the old covenant was dead. In order to become a child of God from henceforth, all one had to do was not just have the luck to be born of a special, chosen race, but to accept the sacrifice God made in offering up Jesus, His "Lamb slain from the foundation of the world" (Rev.13:8). So, for 2000 years, the people of God had a new name. They called themselves Christians. I'm coming to the point, though, where I see that the new people of God, the Christians, are erring just as much from the true basis of their faith, and are straying just as much from God, no matter how vehemently they claim to be God's people nominally, as their ancient predecessors did, and God must be looking around for anybody, from any faith or religion, to do the job the Christians refuse to do, and be living samples of the truth the Christians refuse - to either accept, or to live and obey. One of those men of God, for instance was the Hindu Mahatma Gandhi, who probably lived a better and truer sample of what a Christian was supposed to be like than each and every other Christian on earth during his life-time, put together. That doesn't mean I'm promoting Hinduism. It just means that God can use anyone, even a Hindu, to promote the true meaning and essence of Christianity, if He can't get any of the Christians to do it. I'm coming to the conclusion that Christ is exclusively for the Christians no more than He was exclusively for the Jews. Of course, most Christians will probably want to stone me now, just as the Jews stoned Stephen, one of the early Christians - from the time when a Christian was still a follower of Christ, not Mammon - who proved that the rug of God's anointing had been pulled out from under Jewish feet and given to true believers in Christ. Back then, it cost something to be a believer in Christ: you had to pay the price of persecution for it, of being an outcast. A Christian was a member of a minority group, a small, persecuted and highly controversial sect. Those Christians have long since moved from the arenas of the Roman coliseums into the grandstands. They're no longer martyrs, but they make martyrs of others: fellow Christians, Muslims, Hindus, whoever stands in their way. No wonder most honest people in the world are disgusted by the term "Christian." It has become a term that stands for anything but what Christ stood for: exploitation and suppression

of the poor, domination of anybody too weak to defend themselves by the "Christian," Western "civilization." Those dear Christian brethren simply haven't realized that they've been infiltrated and taken over by the other side, and the spiritual stench of their house has become so bad that God had to move out, run and hide elsewhere, anywhere He would find shelter among humans, in the hearts of the humble, whether Christian or not, the true People of God. The People of God are the People of Love (see John 13:35). If they don't happen to call themselves Christians, I won't blame them. Can you? God's mind on the matter:

"Ye Shall Be As Gods..."

Aug. 9 07

"Ye shall be as gods." A promise that would change the course of history of mankind drastically, and affect each man, woman and child's life ever since the very beginning. One simple choice perhaps carelessly made on a whim - turned creation from a heavenly state into something a lot more like hell for most of us, while enabling some to create their own, artificial little "heaven on earth," where they would be able to play god themselves. Are you one of them? Let's find out. In what way does Satan's temptation, offer and promise to us mortals, "Ye shall be as god's," manifest itself in our lives? In more ways than one, and a lot closer to home than some dare think.

First of all, one aspect in which probably most of us have fallen prey to it, is the urge to provide for ourselves, instead of letting God be the Provider. Before the Fall, man did have to work and look after the garden, name the animals, etc., but it was obvious that everything around him was a gift from his heavenly Creator. Only after the Fall was man doomed to till the ground in order to bring forth from it his own sustenance, and we've all been plodding away at that doom ever since. And that in spite of the fact that Jesus came to liberate us from that slavery to the treadmill of existing merely for our own survival, in fact, challenging us that we would not be able to serve God and the false god of wealth at the same time, but that He would supply all our needs, if we were determined to put His cause first in our lives and serve Him. How many Christians do you know who really believe that? Next, being "gods" has enabled us to create our own "reality." Before the Fall, man already had the knowledge of that which was good. Thus, when he chose to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the added factor was, in fact, the knowledge of evil, the stuff he didn't know before, and that made him so curious & fascinated them to a point where they would disobey God. The first piece of "knowledge" (or let's call it perception) that Satan gave them, apart from the fact that God was a liar ("ye shall not surely die") and the divine status (ye shall be as gods") that was awaiting them in exchange for the forbidden snack, was that it was wrong to be naked. While God obviously didn't see anything wrong with it, but even told them to have sex when He uttered His first commandment, "Be fruitful and multiply," the Devil obviously didn't agree (so, contrary to what we tend to think, the Devil hates sex, and he sure hates us producing offspring!), and helped Adam and Eve to see things his way, which made them ashamed of their nudity and gave them the urge to hide and cover up. "Welcome to your new reality, folks!" Of course, this was a sad, but one of the more harmless lies that have pervaded our perception of things ever since, compared to the notion that it's perfectly alright to kill in order to further our own interests, all the way to our more recent dogmas putting us on one level with our "relatives," the monkeys and reducing us from our former, more glorious position of potential "gods" to mere "monkey-gods." This also touches on a third aspect in which our "god-hood" influences us every day, because what enables us to kill and annihilate entire nations, races or peoples, is the ability to judge. We judge others and look down on them because they are different than we are, thus putting ourselves above them ("gods," after all), and thus condemning them, as the ruling and reigning authority over them, to the loss of their freedoms, their homes, their limbs, their lives, whatever we can get away with. We have also become the masters of creation, doing the same kind of stuff we do to our fellowhumans to our lesser brethren, the animals, the trees, the rivers, the sky, the earth. What else do gods do? Oh, yeah, they celebrate - mostly themselves, with wine, women and song, and that's certainly one thing we're great at: celebrating our own greatness and drowning ourselves in any kind of excess while we're at it. Maybe I'm forgetting some aspect of our fake divinity, and if you happen to know another, feel free to let me know, or just add a comment to this train of thought.

One thing we must not forget, though, is the contrast true divinity constitutes to our momentary enjoyment of our status as the "masters of the universe." If God were like us, He would probably hate us and despise us for being so dumb, so short-sighted and superficial, to fall into any kind of trap the Devil puts before us. Thankfully, He's different, and although in some senses like us (since we were made in His image), yet highly superior. We may not think so, because in our superficial judgment we figure He must be kind of dumb to let us get away with all this, but what we mistake for dumbness is in reality an ability to love and pardon that is as superior to our limited capacities to do anything but wreak havoc and be proud of it, as is the vastness of the universe to the fake space we watch on Star Trek. He cannot quit half-way through the show, though, before the end has been revealed and the lesson is obvious, of where all of this will lead. There is one final chapter yet to be written and added to this epos of "the god called man," one which Papa Bush already eagerly announced in the late 80s as the "New World Order" (and others of his likes did before him), and which will reveal the perfection of man's "divinity" and all he's really capable of without God. Now we're all curious to find out how that's going to end, aren't we? I give you a clue, though: Don't put your expectations and hopes up too high. Chances are, you will be disappointed. Just have a look at history. Is there anything we learn from history apart from the fact that we never learn from history? In the end, it will turn out that we simply failed to read the small print in the deal: that little word "as" makes all the difference in the world. While the true God promises true divinity for those who hear Him, all you really get from ol' Lucy is a fake. All you did was swap the God of truth and love for the god of lies and hate. For the mere "advantage" of not having to recognize your Creator's authority, you'll get an appearance of freedom, but will always be bound to the slavery of the flesh, sin, and the head honcho of the same old "new world order" scheme that has been in charge ever since Adam and Eve let him... When it all comes down to it, the only One Who can guarantee a happy ending for this mess we've gotten ourselves into, is the One we should have listened to in the first place.

Six Days and 23 Hours Or: Why Are the Churches So Screwed Up? Aug.19 07
Anybody who has ever read the Bible and cared about what it meant can tell that there's something seriously and fundamentally wrong with established religion. The blatant gap between "Love your enemies" or "You cannot serve God and Mammon" and the actually practiced cult of violence and greed that has the audacity to officially call itself "Christianity" is too obvious for properly functioning minds to overlook, as rare as such may have become in our times. What many people don't actually know, though, is why it is so. Why are the churches so screwed up - so many light years away from the practice of the teachings of the Man and the Book they so hypocritically claim to follow? What is it about church that can turn 10-year-olds into atheists (as was my own experience)? Well, you know the old saying, "If you can't lick'em, join'em," and that's precisely what the Devil did a long time ago, when it comes to Christianity. Somewhere along the line he realized he simply couldn't wipe those early Christians out, but that the more they were being persecuted, the faster they spread. No wonder St. Paul wrote that you can't really be a true Christian without ever suffering persecution. Truly living your faith as a Christian and consequently experiencing persecution go hand in hand (See 1Tim.3:12). So, ol' Satan pulled out the peace pipe and realized that by stuffing it with the right blend of lukewarm compromise, he was able to do a lot more damage to the church (= "the ecclesia" = the "called out ones" from the Devil's matrix, since he's the one who temporarily runs things down here) than through opposition, namely from the inside. So, one of the first "improvements" on Christianity the Devil instigated upon joining the church, was to persuade his fellow-"Christians" to ignore the apostles' and prophets' admonition that "the Most High" does NOT live in temples made with hands," and suggested, "Hey, now that Rome is an officially Christian empire, why don't we just convert all them heathen temples into Christian temples, er, churches? After all, we don't have to hide underground in the catacombs anymore, we can openly strut to our "services" on Sunday & show off our clothes. Why, we can even keep some of the old idols, errrr... statues of our old pagan gods and goddesses and rename them 'Mary, Jesus, St. Joseph, St. John,' and so on..." Never before was being a Christian that comfortable. Before long, Christianity had moved from the arenas of Rome's coliseums into the grandstands, as they turned from the persecuted into the persecutors. No wonder Mohammed was so sick of what he saw in Christianity that he felt urged by God to initiate a new religion dedicated to wiping out this farce of Christianity-turned-into-idolatry. Everything went honky-dory for centuries, and some of the heads of the church, supposed followers of Peter, the disciple of Jesus, who like nearly all the others of the original 12 had

given his life for his faith, turned out so diabolical that there are still groups of believers nowadays who firmly believe that the antichrist is the pope. Not that I subscribe to that, but just to demonstrate how anti-Christ Christianity has become over the centuries. But then along came Luther. He just couldn't keep from reading that darned Book, the Bible, and while sitting on the toilet one day, one simple verse in it struck him like a lightning, and the divine revelation that the commercial system of selling forgiveness for money, as the Catholic church was practicing (until the early 20th century, in fact), was NOT Christianity at all, since it said right there that "by GRACE are ye saved, through faith, and that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God. Not of works, lest any man should boast" (Ephesians 2:8,9). In other words, we can't go to Heaven by our works. It's a gift. One can only receive it (see also John 1:12, 3:16, 3:36, etc.). One simply had to believe it. In order to be able to believe it, the people had to know that God said it, so they needed Bibles. That was the beginning of the end of the superstition the world had come to know as "Christianity" for over a millennium... A millennium which the catholic church officially believed to have been Christ's reign on earth, while for the rest of the world it pretty much resembled the Dark Ages. But ol' Lucy didn't give up so quickly quite yet. After all, he had managed to deceive and delude and distract them Christians once - nah, countless times - before, and he was going to manage to do so again. He had - and still has - various tactics to do so. After all, he has legions of fallen angels to help him sow division among believers, tell them lies or tempt them with greed. And if all that didn't do the trick, he could let them fall into the trap of self-righteousness and have them believe they were better than everybody else. But on May 1st 1776, he inspired the German Jewish mind of the former Jesuit Adam Weishaupt on behalf of the heads of the Rothschild family in Frankfurt to call into life an organization, which was going to successfully infiltrate pretty much all of the established religions available in the world's supermarket of faiths - as well as most of the world's governments, of course. If Jesus had His church, His called-out ones of followers, then Lucifer was certainly going to have that, too. Only he wouldn't choose any bedraggled fishermen from some back-wood, Godforsaken province of the deceased Roman empire. He was going to use the kings and queens of the world, the richest of the rich, those who were worthy of him and to be called his, the Enlightened Ones. Apart from enlightening the benighted rest of the world, it was part of the Illuminatis job to make sure that the churches would stay "enlightened" as well, and not start practicing what that Sonof-a-carpenter Leader of theirs once said. Luckily, Christians turned out to be much more fond of ceremonies and rituals, and colored windows, organs and pulpits and paying off their preacher to keep them at peace for serving Mammon, instead of God, for 6 days and 23 hours a

week... except for a few stubborn ones who insisted on becoming missionaries - but apparently there always must be a few fanatics around. After all, they had been into this type of Churchianity for centuries now, and like the chained eagle running back into the rut he had worn around the stake in the ground even after the chain had been taken off - Christians flip-flopped right back into their rut of Churchianity, and pretty much didn't care too much about all that stuff Jesus had said about loving everyone and forsaking material possessions in order to follow Him... After all, that was 2000 years ago, and we had evolved into something much smarter than those ape-men back then, right? Right. That's why you'll find a statue of Charles Darwin right along those of the other "great" philosophers (like Jesus) in Rockefeller's Riverside Church in New York. Now that's a family that knows how to keep their fellow humans enlightened about what is politically correct to believe and what not, even if you must insist on calling yourself a Christian. And it helps to have the money, too, to make sure that the preacher will preach exactly that, to keep all those "Christians" as nice, obedient slaves to the Matrix 6 days and 23 hours, 52 weeks a year. They also have enough money to finance the National Geographic society to make sure that some archeologist periodically finds another "proof" that we all come from the monkeys. And for those who insist on believing the other version (God made the world, and He could have done it in 6 seconds but chose to use 6 days for it), just put a lunatic in the White House who claims to believe that same stuff, and that will cure the half-way properly thinking rest of the world from such fanaticism. It's interesting to note that the spreading of Christian fundamentalism was part of the "Majesty 12" agenda for bringing about the New World Order. Have some people who claim to believe what the Bible says and preach it incessantly while at the same time behaving like Adolf Hitler, and that will cure the world of Christianity for good. So, what's wrong with Christianity today? The same that has been wrong with it for nearly 1700 years. But you're not going to believe any of it, anyway, because you're smarter than to believe that the Devil actually exists, right? Or, if he does, that you, a Christian, could actually have been so dumb to have fallen for his deceptions all this time, right? Right... "He that thinketh he standeth, let him take heed, lest he fall."

Thou Shalt Love

Oct.13 07
In my treatise on "Bible Verses Most Christians Choose to Ignore" I've brought out some of the advantages and reasons that make me stick to my Family, even after 27 years of ups and downs, constant spiritual revolution and the accompanying controversy that's bound to appear as a side affect... But I think I left out one - probably the most important factor. Nearly every church or congregation has a verse that they choose as their dogma, their highest commandment: for the 7th Day Adventists, it's the commandment to keep the Sabbath. For the Pentecostals, it's the gift of tongues. For most Catholics it's probably just being catholic. For Baptists, as for Mormons, it's the water. And then there are those red-white & blue flag waving patriots and warmongers who still seem to be clinging to the Old Testament dogma of "an eye for an eye..." (Not to mention those cunning politicians and leaders who pose as Christians, when in reality subscribing to the god of this world. You can recognize them by a very devout dedication to the 10 commandments: "Thou shalt not kill; thou shalt not covet; thou shalt not lie, etc., except that they always omit the word "not" from each phrase.) Now, the highest, greatest, and yes, even only commandment the Family adheres to, above all, and which has been the gist of our message from the very beginning, is the very same one which Jesus Himself described as the fulfilment of all the laws and the prophets (Matthew 22:37-40), namely, to love God and our fellowman. As our leader and shepherdess wrote, "The only thing that matters is love." In other words, our religion is love, and as one nature-born sucker for love, I can only say that that's the only religion, in my opinion, ever worthy of subscribing to. For most Christians, love is probably not enough. They need buildings, rituals, certain amounts of physically visible success as manifested in the abundance of the things they possess, but you can keep all that, if it makes you happy. As for me, I'll choose love any day above that. After all, if God IS love, as the Bible tells us clearly, then what higher thing could there ever be to strive for?

When love becomes your religion, it becomes more than that. Most Christians keep their religion tucked away well hidden from everybody else, in some neat little corner in their lives they reserve for God: that hour on Sunday mornings, or that brief devotional reading or prayer sometime during the day, which I don't want to minimize or put down. But when you truly seek to adhere to the first and great Commandment of Love, it becomes part of every facet of your life. And I think that's precisely what Jesus was trying to teach us. He was precisely trying to convey to us the opposite of the "separation of religion and state" of our minds and affairs. He was saying, if it's the Real Thing, you can't keep it separate. After all, relegio(n) is about putting things together, not taking them apart. So, anything less than love is not enough (true) religion for me. Anything else is at best a cheap imitation. How does your faith manifest itself in your life? How does your religion come across in your interaction with others every day? How much do you express your love for God and others on a daily basis? How real is what you believe in?

Dr. Pious & Mr. Cool Oct.26 07

I've been listening to a bunch of Christian artists from the Acoustic Praise Caf on Word of Truth Webradio, and noticed how a little bit of variety in the lyrics would really be refreshing, since it seems that a lot of them have a very limited vocabulary in which they have thus far learned to express their love, affection and devotion to God. I've also been trying to imagine how they would talk in every day language, and about the probably vast difference between the way they sing and then actually talk, since they probably aren't very likely to address their friends in Shakespearean English: "Thy countenance dearly pleaseth me this day, beloved friend..." It kind of strikes me as some kind of double-life, and it's one that I'm personally all too familiar with. We think we've got to tuck our religion away, keep it safely within the confines of our church or allotted time-slot of worship and praise, and then put on our "just-like-everybody-else" act again, as soon as we step out of our sacred halls into real life again, lest someone should get offended or think we're nuts. Contrary to that, King David wrote, "I will bless the Lord at all times. His praise shall be continually in my mouth." Again, the people I know who come closest to that, are The Family, although I must admit that our habits to praise the Lord continually have died down somewhat in recent years. But if you'll visit any Family Home, you're probably very likely to hear the terms "praise the Lord" or "Thank You, Jesus" a lot more than anywhere else in the world.

If the "Most High dwelleth among the praises of His people," then we should make an effort to make Him feel at home with us. It's also a matter of deciding, instead of "being conformed to this world," to "be transformed by the renewing of our minds." According to the ways of the world, we consider things we like, to be "cool" or "great," or "awesome," which is okay, but why not give credit to the One Who made'em that way? And that means, not just praising the Lord in church or whenever we sing our songs of praise and worship, but, as the Bible says, continually and "giving thanks always"? If you've read Merlin Carothers' "Prison to Praise," you'll know what a powerful weapon it is, and how it can change lives. So what if others might think you're some kind of a religious fanatic or freak? Who are we trying to please? God or man? Even if we don't have the faith to be praising God in front of unbelievers, at least our own Homes should always be filled with praise, and our friends and spouses should be used to hearing us praise, instead of resorting to the lingo we inevitably pick up from the movies... Otherwise it's like some Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde syndrome, where we put on one face and personality on one occasion, and the other one on others, "Dr. Christian and Mr. Normal," or "Dr. Pious and Mr. Cool," etc. We can develop the guts to just be ourselves, instead of what all our peers around us dictate is cool and accepted and what's not. Have you ever noticed how kids are being drilled into uniformity these days by the media? If Hitler would have had those sort of tools, he would have conquered the world. And as I always say, the next "Fuehrer" is going to come for sure... Are we going to be mature enough Christians next time, to have the guts to dare to be different?

The Leaven of the Pharisees

posted Dec.1, 2007

If you type "leaven of the Pharisees" in your Google bar, you'll come up with nearly as many results and definitions of the term, as there are denominations and churches. For the fundamentalist hardliners, the Pharisees of today are represented by the catholic church, whose members, again, have their own definitions. I find the leaven of the Scribes and Pharisees to be much closer to home than the other side, the other denomination. The leaven of the Pharisees is a sin we have all committed, especially the most righteous among us. It is the sin that nailed our Savior to the cross: Selfrighteousness. It's the audacity of thinking we have the right to judge another, blatantly defing Jesus' own commandment He gave us to "judge not that ye be not judged" (Matth.7:1). But we go ahead and do it anyway. We go around and call others "fornicators" and "adulterers" because they live together "in sin" without a marriage license. We go around and tell others the Satanic lie that they can lose their Salvation if they don't watch out and stop sinning, quoting the only verse most Christians ever memorize on Salvation (Phil.2:12): "Work out thine own Salvation in fear and trembling" (Ahhh, it feels so good to cause others to feeeaaaar and trrrremmmmble, doesn't it? - So who's the pervert here?).... Of course, totally ignoring the dozens of Scriptures that make it quite plain that Salvation is a gift of grace, only to be obtained through faith, and without works, whatsoever. What Paul was referring to in the verse above, is what we make out of our Salvation in this life, and what kind of a life we build on the foundation of the new life in Christ. But our eternal Salvation is a gift of God (Ephesians 2:8,9), and if God is Love (1John 4:8), then He won't jerk that gift away from His child every time he sins. Besides, sinning is something we all do a lot more often than we like to admit. Those selfrighteous Scribes and Pharisees of today are just trying to make it easier on themselves by redefining sin: you are a sinner because you're not married, and I'm not, because I go to church

on Sundays and have a marriage license. According to Jesus, everyone who even so much as looks at a woman and desires her in his heart, has already committed adultery (Mt.5:28). Now, the only sort of (male) people I know of who can withstand that natural urge God built into a healthy man's system, are homosexuals.

Selected Scriptures About the Pharisees:

Mt.5:20 You've got to be better than those who are think they are good, if you want to go to Heaven. Mt.12:14 (It was the Pharisees who were responsible for Jesus' death, not the Romans, nor the publicans and sinners, prostitutes and adulterers!); Mt.12:34 When the Pharisees accuse Jesus of casting out demons through the Devil's power, He winds up calling them a "generation of vipers, how can ye, being evil, speak good things?" Mt.12:39 He also calls them an "evil and adulterous generation." Funny, because it was usually the Pharisees that point their fingers at adulterers (as they still do!). What is Jesus trying to tell these people? Perhaps the same thing Paul was trying to tell them in Romans 2:1, that they become guilty of the same things they judge others of? Maybe the spiritual adultery they commit with the gods of this world (materialism, power and prestige) and with the spirits of the Devil (pride, self-righteousness, etc.) are much worse in God's eyes than the mere "sins" of the flesh? Mt.15:3 Here Jesus replies to their accusation of having broken one of the formalities of Jewish law by asking them, "Why do you break the law of God by your tradition?" What IS the law of God? In Mt.22:36-40 Jesus makes it plain that the law of God is LOVE, and all the other little laws are fulfilled in that one. In other words, the traditions of both Scribes and Pharisees of yesterday and of their self-righteous followers of today are breaking God's true law! Mt.15:5 He goes on to say that they are making the law of God of none effect by their traditions. Why is it that you find anything but love in those churches? (John 13:35). Mt.15:8 They're always praising God with their lips in their church services, but then treat their fellow humans with the very self-righteousness of the Devil, oblivious to the fact that they are putting God at the same distance from their heart to which they exiled that sinner they judge. Mt.15:9 Such worship is empty and vain in God's eyes. They're replacing God's law of Love with their own man-made rules: "Thou shalt not this and thou shalt not that, and thou shalt not the other," instead of "Thou shalt love!" Mt.15:14 They're blind guides (thinking they see - John 9:41), destined for a hard landing. Mt.16:6 Beware of the leaven of Self-righteousness! Mt.21:23-46 Jesus responds to their questioning His authority by a parable in which he exposes their plan to kill Him and announces that the Kingdom will be torn away from them and given to

a nation that would bring forth the fruits of the Kingdom. Instead of self-righteously judging lonely people, they ought to win their souls to Christ and bring forth fruit for the Kingdom, instead of chasing them in the other direction! Mt.23 - A whole chapter full of advice from Jesus to both His disciples and the multitudes about the Pharisees, which He probably knew were going to be around for as long as the Devil himself: verse 3: You can listen to their sermons, but don't follow their sample! They don't practice what they preach! Verse 4: they burden you with rules that they wouldn't even think of keeping themselves. Verse 13: Woe unto you Pharisees! You won't allow others to go to Heaven, and you won't go there yourselves! Verse 14-16: Woe! Woe! Woe! Verse 23: Woe unto you: Keeping your little traditions, you have omitted the weightier things of the law: (true) judgment, mercy and faith! Verse 25: Woe unto the hypocrites! All clean on the outside (pretence) and all filthy on the inside (in God's eyes)! Verse 28: Appearing righteous, they're really full of hypocrisy and sin. Verse 33: Doesn't look like they're going where we're going. Verse 34: The Pharisees ceased to exist after the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70, only 40 years after Jesus said this. So, who is He talking to? Who are the prophets and wise men and writers they keep persecuting? John 8:15-59 Probably the most remarkable conversation between Jesus and the Pharisees recorded in the Bible, during which He plainly tells them, "Ye are of your father, the Devil," which causes them to try to stone him. John 9 - A chapter describing the pitiful dilemma with the Pharisees: no matter what good you will do, they will never recognize it unless you play the game according to their rules, the only standard they accept is their own, and the only world they see is their own. According to Jesus, they see nothing at all. John 11:53 They kill the love, they kill God's gift of love, they kill... Acts 7:51-58 ... and kill again. The story continues.

Nowadays they may not kill the prophets physically (they probably would, if they could, as the inquisitors and other Christian rulers have done for centuries), but they still spread death through their false doctrines of "eternal insecurity" and fear, that one might lose their Salvation, if they're not good enough. And, of course, they can legally exterminate tens of thousands of people who dare to believe otherwise through their practical little instrument called war. Just elect a warmonger for president, and you'll have those God-darn heathen taken care of big-time.
"Here I am, an empty hallway Broken windows, rainy nights I am 1962 and I am ready for a fight People crying 'Hallelujah!' while the bullet leaves the gun People falling, falling, falling and I don't know where they're falling from." (Jann Arden, "Unloved")

The Infiltration of the Church - "Many Shall Cleave to Them With Flatteries" (Dan.11:34)

Dec.18, 07

Recently we saw a movie I didn't particularly like, nor would I recommend for anyone to undergo the agony of viewing it, since it wasn't exactly edifying, but nevertheless, it kept me thinking for some reason. The plot: An Irish Mafia boss raises a kid to become his spy with the local police force, while at the same time his gang of criminals is being infiltrated by a less than lucky cop. In other words: a bad guy pretending to be a good guy who spies on them and betrays them, vs. a good guy pretending to be a bad guy. Both get killed in the end, and you feel like the one deserved it, but the other didn't.

It kept haunting me, though, and naive as I am, I just can't help not believing in coincidence... My personal - howbeit deceased - "guru" once wrote: "It's funny we never hear much about Judas in the churches, when they're so full of people just like him." I know, that hurts. No, this isn't going to be another attempt at writing my first politically correct blog, either. But as it is, religious people have a a notorious history for rejecting the good guys who come to them and tell them the truth, while they usually receive with open arms the false prophets with their gospels of peace. False prophets were always more popular than the real ones, although it was usually the real ones who were labeled "false prophets" by the majority during their lifetimes. But history told the tale. There were hundreds of prophets prophesying peace and safety during the days of Jeremiah, the solitary voice proclaiming the downfall of Israel, who was tossed in the dungeon for his "heresies," but when he was pulled out of the hole, his "heresies" had been fulfilled. One such modern day heretic was the former witch and Illuminist John Todd, who, during the 70s, claimed that the church was being heavily infiltrated by witches. Not many believed him. And I doubt many people will pay attention to my saying "I believe he was right." You see, I just don't believe in coincidence. Why did I see that bloody movie around the same time I come across the voice of Rebecca St. James on some web radio station, inviting people to join her on the "Presidential Prayer Team"? Now, I know that many folks sincerely believe that the president - Lord, bless his soul - is a genuine Christian. But then, not many folks are into using the gifts of the Spirit these days, such as the gift of discernment. Nor are they into Scriptures like "He that liveth by the sword shall also die by the sword," or "love your enemies." All they know is, "The Bible says, 'God bless America!'" They're also not into "Insider" information (what they term "conspiracy theories") about Skull & Bones, the Illuminati & the guys who really run and ruin their country, in efforts to establish Papa Bush's long awaited wonderful New World Order. So, they may all wholeheartedly join Rebecca St. James - a Christian singer, - judging by her accent - probably from a country where she wouldn't have aspired anywhere near such heights as "the Presidential Prayer Team" with Christian music - in their prayers for their "Christian" president and his troupes that he's sending to slaughter the "wicked" Muslims. After all, didn't God command the Israelites in the Old Testament to wipe out all the Canaanites? True. But a lot has happened since then. For example, God - the great I Am, Who created the earth, became flesh - a human being, and "dwelt among us," and preached a new gospel, namely that we were to love our enemies and convert them, instead of slaughtering them. The problem is that people who are into power don't appreciate that kind of message. And that's why they reject Him. Then and today. Whenever He sends a messenger that gives them the Words of God for today, they do the same to him, as Jesus prophesied.

While the false prophets are being hailed and honored and treated like superstars. Has God all of a sudden become the God of the mighty, the powerful, the gun slingers and warmongers? Since when? Did I miss something? Or did you miss something? - Namely the part of the Bible that's called The New Testament? There's a new deal up, folks, and it's not "an eye for an eye" anymore, much less "ten thousand eyes for an eye," but it's the much less popular gospel of "love thy neighbor as thyself," and "love your enemies." Apparently the history of the infiltration of the "good guys" by the bad guys goes back a long way: the popes who sent their crusaders off to slaughter the early Muslims probably also had their "Presidential Prayer Teams." And the Inquisition had their own "War on Terror" and "Patriot Act" and "Homeland Security" going on all along. It's just that we thought we weren't living in the Dark Ages anymore. That's really what we thought.

Wonderful Counselor

12/22/07
What many people don't know about the Bible is that it contains hundreds of ancient prophecies, written hundreds of years before they were being fulfilled. Of course, there are those who claim that the entire Bible is a fraud, just like they would have us believe that God is an invention of man, instead of the other way around, but I covered that earlier. One of the ancient prophecies I'm referring to, is the one by the prophet Isaiah from around 700 B.C., which we also included in our Christmas card, shown in our Christmas post below: "For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given: and the government shall be upon His shoulder: and His name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, The mighty God, The everlasting

Father, The Prince of Peace" (Isaiah 9:6). In this, one of the most beautiful prophecies about Jesus' birth, Isaiah describes a child that would be born, although at the same time it would be "The mighty God, The everlasting Father," etc. Most Christians refer to Jesus also as "Wonderful," and some, thankfully, still consider Him the Prince of Peace (not the champion of warmongers), but the one thing I'm particularly thankful for this morning, which unfortunately is the one attribute that is not so avidly recognized by most of His believers, is that Jesus is also the most perfect Counselor one could possibly have. I personally love communicating. Especially about spiritual and heavenly things. And the neat thing is, so does the Lord. But it seems that in most cases, He needs to trick us into accepting, receiving, or even becoming aware of most of His attempted communications with us. Still, the majority of believers consider prayer to be their monologue directed at God. "After all," they figure, "He said His piece, and whatever He had to say, in the Bible." And then He quit talking ever since... A mute God, instead of a Counselor. There are even some Catholics who are smarter than that. One of them is Richard Rohr, the Franciscan who puts it so wonderfully in his book "Radical Grace:" "Unless we can presume that the Lord is speaking right now, how can we believer that He ever spoke? To have an attitude of faith is to hear the Lord speaking everywhere and all the time, in the concrete and ordinary circumstances of our lives." There are many Promises in the Bible in which God tells us that He would counsel us, if we care to listen. God's phone number, Jeremiah 33:3, for instance, says, "Call unto Me, and I will show thee great and mighty things which thou knowest not." In the Psalms He promises, "I will guide the with Mine Eye," or elsewhere, "thou shalt hear a word behind thee, saying, 'This is the way...'" or "Knock and it shall be opened unto you," "Acknowledge Him and He shall direct thy paths." In other words, if you have a little time on hand, but no cash to spend on therapists or counselors who will "lead thee in the paths" of Nietzsche and Freud, try the best Counselor of all times. In fact, He's so good at it, advertisement for His services was already written 700 years before He was born. Try a little hearing from Heaven, and see what it can do for you! Happy Christmas to Y'all! Happy Birthday, Wonderful Counselor!

Preaching At Home Syndrome 1/7/08

I know I'm repeating myself, but it just seems to be a fact that comes slinging back in my face over and over again: "The only thing we learn from history is that we never learn from history" (A. Toynbee). One particular thing I'm referring to that we don't seem to learn from history, is what I'd call overcoming the "preaching at home" syndrome: It took the Early Church years, if not actual decades, until they finally realized and remembered (or at least cared to pay attention to the fact) that Jesus had bid them to "go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature" (Mark 16:15), and not just to the Jews back home in the "Promised Land." It took a former enemy of the church, the persecutor Saul turned missionary no.1 Paul, to lead the way and show that the Gospel was destined for the World, and not just for fellow Jews at home. Why am I saying that this keeps happening? Well, look at the church today: Who are they preaching to? When you listen to those big star preachers like Joyce Meyer or a song from one of the many Christian bands and superstars from the U.S., whom are they addressing? Almost exclusively fellow Christians. The attitude is similar to that which must have been that of the Early Church stuck back home: "We like our own kind. As far as them Hottentots out there, well, let'em go to hell: we wouldn't want them around in heaven, anyway." Not only did the Early Christians initially fail to obey their Lord's bidding to spread out the message into the whole world, but they even gave the only fellow who actually did the job a hard time, by criticizing him and his ways of doing it and criticizing his flock ("Your pagan converts need to be circumcised and eat only kosher food, if they want to be saved," etc.). They most definitely failed to support him, initially.

It seems that the only thing that finally got them to change their minds on the issue was what God usually has to use in order to get his people out of their comfy-cozy ruts: persecution. That was a lesson the Early Church Jews had failed to learn from their ancestors in Egypt. They'd been having such a great time there in the fertile Nile delta, the land of Goshen, which had been given to Joseph (son of Jacob, son of Isaac, son of Abraham - as a reminder) for saving the world from starvation, that the furthest thing on their mind was getting outta there for some "Promised Land." It took the rise of some really mean Pharaoh, who was having them kill their own male babies and use the Jews as a slave work force, that very slowly managed to change their minds. Now, over a thousand years later, the first Christians didn't want to hear anything about that promise of "I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance." And it took incessant persecution to finally shake'em up and follow the footsteps of that suspicious Paul dude... What will it take for today's Christians to turn their focus outward, toward the lost sheep, instead of singing and preaching to each other over and over again? Especially those in a certain country which seems to almost resemble another "Promised Land," which - in the opinion of others - is slowly turning into a spiritual Egypt? I guess we'll have to wait and see what God is going to have to pull out of His sleeve this time to get His people to join the frowned upon few who are already in the fields, tediously raking in the harvest.

Parallel Worlds?

2/11/08 The fact that there are people who have had to go through extraordinary hardships, and yet testify that if they had to do it all over again, they wouldn't have it any different, leads one to wonder: If God's is really in charge, and He's really putting an effort into making this whole stage-play of world history come out with the best results possible, then who needs parallel worlds? I mean, if God is omniscient and can foresee the future, and like Nicolas Cage in the movie "Next," foresee all the other options, then there would be no need to play them all out in an endless

amount of alternative versions and destinies, each in their own parallel universe, as some claim ought to be the case, right? No, that doesn't mean that everything is preset and predestined, either. We still make our choices. But God does His best to help us make the right ones, and when we don't, to make the best out of that, too. It's a real, live work of art & Master piece in the making, the Big Picture; and I don't think it's just one of a gazillion just like it. This is it. The Real Thing. If life - as bad as it sometimes or even often may seem to us - is the best it possibly can be (especially for those who try to make the right choices because they love God - see Romans 8:28), then it's really another reason to trust God fully for what He's doing right here and right now - or, even if He's not doing it all Himself - for what He's allowing to happen. If we are convinced that in the final analysis, the outcome of our story is going to be the best possible, a universal lesson on good and evil never to be forgotten by men & angels, then we can fully embrace everything that's happening, even if it may not look all that desirable to us. Of course, some things are still left up to us. What's really hard for us to believe and fully realize is that one of the most significant things we can do in order to influence things and really have an impact on the course of things is to pray. We prefer to make more physical contributions to the flow and rhythm of all things and show off how strong we are, instead of availing ourselves of some invisible Power we're not always quite sure of. But if we were, then we could certainly trust the universe (and the Power that both created and maintains it) around us more, instead of deeming it only one of innumerable options that are happening simultaneously. If God already knew all the other options and possible outcomes, then this is it. You don't need to look or wait for anything better, nor passively resign to the great meaninglessness of everything, but you can put your whole heart into making the best out of the here and now, fully confident of the fact that you've got very competent help and support. As usual, this option will sound way too naive and simple for most people to choose, who live by the rule, "Why make it easy, when you can make it complicated?" But if you're ever tired of the confusion and apparent senselessness of it all under your current mindset, try simple and childlike trust. Yes, in spite of the circumstances and their gross and scary looks.

P.S.: One more thought on the idea of a nearly identical parallel universe. If you look at creation, youll inevitably spot Gods sense for variety. If He doesnt create one snowflake or egg exactly the same as the other, its not very likely that Hed create another universe exactly like ours, much less a whole bunch ofem. Besides, there are whole different dimensions to explore yet already, that we know very little about. So who needs another world just like this one, with only a few details changed? Not me.

Babylon the Whore

3/1/08 I've been watching the first 7 issues of Chuck Missler's Revelation video series on Google Video last week, and while I am thankful for the elaborate background information Missler gives on the deeper significance that lies in the Letters to the 7 Churches, there are also points in which I personally feel he's totally off the track, such as the erroneous Pre-Tribulation Rapture, of course, but also his identifying Babylon the Whore as literal ancient Babylon in Iraq. I've also read portions of Dave Hunt's book "A Woman Rides The Beast," which Chuck Missler repeatedly recommends, to see whether I would be able to reconcile with the thought that Babylon the great Whore as described in Revelations 17 and 18 could perhaps be Rome, but also in this case, I must accredit those two Americans' interpretation of those Scriptures to the same - typical for Americans - wishful thinking that misleads millions of Christians to belief in a Pre-Tribulation Rapture. While it is certainly true that Rome and the Catholic Church are guilty of the blood of innocent millions, and it's certainly true that the remnant of what used to be true Christianity that they are presenting to the world as such is blasphemous and certainly good reason for God's indignation, it takes Americans to fail to recognize that the slaughter, rape of the truth and untold bloodshed perpetrated by their own country over the past centuries makes even Rome look innocent and saintly by comparison. Of course, recognizing this fact takes a willingness to face the truth and to see beyond the "America the Beautiful" image that most Americans and part of the rest of the world (still) are enchanted with, and a look beyond the official version of history; a look behind the curtains as to who really financed and instigated the first two world wars, the Russian Revolution, and literally every other war during the past few centuries of our world's history. The bloody tracks lead to another "great and mighty city" that "sitteth upon many waters" and plays the tunes to which all nations really dance, be it financially, culturally or politically. A city, so great and mighty, in fact, that modern day Rome looks like a little village in comparison, the skyline of which you see daily on TVs, billboards and web pages or in movie theatres all over the world

There is even a town called "Babylon" on Long Island, New York. As (not only) Insiders know, the Statue of Liberty is in reality an idol representing the Babylonian goddess Semiramis, watching over her favored child. Just read for yourself the verses about "Babylon the Great Whore" which shall be destroyed in one hour, and make up your mind, whether this is most applicable to the Italian city of Rome, the - howbeit rebuilt - ruins of ancient Babylon in Iraq, or the City which not only houses the United Nations, the Council on Foreign Relations, but also the financers behind it all, including the very material they're forcing on our kids in school as "truth" every day: Rockefellers & Co. If you're in touch with reality at all, and you're bold enough to face the ugly truth about your beloved and oh so great country, you'll see that the other 2 alternatives are pitifully erroneous wishful thinking cooked up by people whose loyalty is rather to the flag of their country than the cross, when Jesus told His disciples clearly that they were not of this world, just as He wasn't. America, it's time to open up your eyes that the rest of the world is seeing through your camouflage of "democracy." You've just become another big bully world empire, dictating your views on the rest of the world, you're the greatest oppressor of the poor and innocent this world has ever seen in its pitiful history, and you're going to reap what you've sown. God promises it, and there won't be any "Pre-Tribulation Rapture," either, to save you out of it! Oh, and did I mention it? Your President is a mass murderer, - and he's not the first in line - going down in history as another infamous villain like Hitler and Stalin, who were ultimately brought into power by your money in the first place, too. What you may not know is, that the Beast you're riding on, that wonderful and glorious "New World Order" your head honchos like Bush Sr., are so eagerly promoting, will turn against you, rend you in pieces and devour your flesh. Read Revelations 17 and 18 for what they are! Read and weep!

Public School Makes Kids Stupid

March 27, 2008

Its official now, as far as Im concerned and what hundreds of thousands of parents of homeschoolers have already known for decades, Ive recently found confirmed by serious book authors, such as John Taylor Gatto and Charlotte T. Iserbyt: Public Schools make kids stupid. If you want to know the exact reasons for this statement, you can read this paper by Kent Daniel Bentkowski, since Im not just writing this blog to confirm what youve probably known all along, but Im aiming at something else. Im aiming at a point I just discovered during the past 24 hours, and that is that the public school system is there for a special less than benign purpose. If life itself is a school, and God our great Teacher, then the school system is what the Devil cooked up in order to distract kids from what God is trying to teach us through everything, to indoctrinate us and inoculate us against His truth, so clearly visible everywhere in His creation. When we are children, we still see it, but then the brainwashing starts, and all you see afterwards is confusion. Its not wonder that Rick Joyner saw school teachers among the guards and wardens of the prison of life in his vision in The Call. Along with other official defenders of the System, theyre one group of guardians of the Matrix, and if they dare to excel above their duty of making sure the kids stay dumb, they will probably run into the same frustrations J.T. Gatto describes in his books, Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling, and The Underground History of American Education. I must give our faith-community, The Family International, credit for having recognized that fact from the beginning (our founder compared public schools to the ancient pagan deity Moloch, to whom newborns were sacrificed), and being on the forefront of Christian home schoolers, when

it comes to international movements, and for making home-schooling the undisputed choice of preference for children of full-time members. Unfortunately, in some countries, such as Germany, public school is really compulsory, as in you go to jail or lose custody if you dont do it. Bearing the only advantage that by the time youve had 6 children go through the treadmill of a public school system intricately designed to produce idiots, you can only whole-heartedly agree with the above authors. Too bad freedom doesnt go all that far, in some so-called democracies, but we already covered that topic The longer one lives in this world and actually sees whats going on, the more aspects one finds in which the System is just a pitiful counterfeit of the Real Thing, Gods original plan for us: the health care system, the economic system, certainly the political system, the church system, and the educational system. All designed beautifully to bring about the desired result: total failure. As the author of one article about the health care situation in the US wrote some time ago, If you want to stay healthy, keep away from hospitals! I would paraphrase that and say, If you want your kids to be smart, keep them away from public schools! IF you can, that is. If you love your child and the country you live in grants that liberty, use it! No wonder, Jesus said one would have to forsake all that he hath in order to be His disciple. You wont want anything this world has to offer. You just cant have two masters. If youre already being brainwashed by those poor underpaid and overworked teachers in public school and their dictated curriculum of no sense, no purpose & no idea, then itll be hard to concentrate on anything the Great Teacher is trying to tell you. You either let them convert you into a System-junkie, or you become a freedom-fighter for the truth.

Let It Happen!
April 3, 2008 Gods greatest, if not single commandment to all of us, is to love. Thou shalt love! The problem is, in the times in which we are living, about which Jesus Himself said, And because evil will increase, the love of many shall grow cold, that is sometimes easier said than done. How do you love? How do you do it? Id say, primarily, its something that youve got to allow to happen. Its an effort you make, but its primarily an effort of receiving, of accepting. You let it happen, before you can make it happen. You accept that loving is just the thing to do, and you allow that law of love to rule your life and adjust your behavior accordingly. Youve got to have it in, first, before you can give it out What makes it hard to put that into practice is our natural urge to be doing something, achieving or creating something ourselves, with our own two hands; something we can pat

ourselves on the back for. Too often we find ourselves among those the prophet Jeremiah mentioned, who worshipped the works of their own hands (Jer.1:16). We just cant sit still long enough to really listen to God and find out how He wants things done in the first place. We like to take our destiny into our own hands and make a name for ourselves. All else we consider too boring. That is, in my opinion, precisely why were falling so short and doing such a lousy job at fulfilling the great Commandment. We think were so smart and so good at it, but are we? If were so good at it, and such fine, obedient Christians, then why are there 10.000 people starving every day while we stuff our bellies with fast food? Why are we praying for and applauding guys who are gang-raping 15 year old Muslim girls in the name of democracy and Christendom, driving them into suicide? Why do we silently stand by while another Hitler is threatening to take over the world, fulfilling his daddys ambitions to create a New World Order? Are we really Christians, or are we nuts? Could it be that the thing were making happen is not exactly what we ought to let happen, if we were just so kind and let God take over the reins? Are we really on the right track? I mean, are we really, even if we may be 100% convinced that we are, but are we, according to Gods Word? Or could it be that were missing something, lacking something? Hope to God that the description of the Laodicean church doesnt fit us: Thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked (Rev.3:17). Just because God seems to be blessing us with an abundance of money and wealth, can we be so dead sure that this is really a sign of His blessing for obeying His commandments of love? Can we really be sure that the reason for our wealth is not the exploitation of our poorer fellowman and neighbor, whom were supposed to love as ourselves? How would we feel, if we were at the other end; say, as the father of the 15 year old girl who committed suicide after her encounter with the American soldiers who so gleefully boast of their heroic deed? How would we think about Christianity if we were in their shoes? Can we really continue kidding ourselves into believing that everythings the way its supposed to be with this world, our governments, our way of practicing our faith? Are we really doing all we can, or should we rather do less of what were doing, and make sure were really doing the right thing first? Im personally finding myself falling short in many aspects of my daily life, and have started to realize that its mainly because Im still relying way too much on my own wits and strength, instead of making dead sure Im getting ahold of Gods power to do whatever it is I do. And I have a feeling Im not the only one.

The Trouble With the Truth

May 14, 2008 As much as we all long for the ability to enjoy life, there are certain things that make it tough and a bit of a pain sometimes. One of the things that make it hardest for me to enjoy life is the pitiful state an alarmingly growing number of my fellowmen is falling into, and a certain quality that seems to be ever increasing, which is an appalling lack of interest in the truth. No matter whether its about Evolution or 9/11 or any other subject on which it would require a little bit of courage to embrace the truth instead of the broadband input of lies coming at us from the powers that be and their cronies, the media, people not only seem to prefer the more comfortable lie over the shocking truth, but they even vehemently defend it. Never before was the proverb as true as today, No matter how rare the truth, the supply has always been in excess of the demand. Its almost as if people worship the lie, and mans philosophy in the 21st century with few exceptions has become a philosophy of lies, a fake reality, very much as described in The Matrix. People are increasingly, as the Bible says willingly ignorant, or, as Kent Hovind put it, dumb on purpose. The attitude is, Dont bother us with the truth! Entertain us! Okay, granted, it would probably make it a bit easier if those who are a furious voice for the truth would have all the details straight, and if there wouldnt be all those variations. Some things we simply dont know yet. But instead of looking at the overwhelming evidence in favour of the truth, defenders of the lie nitpick at the little details we dont have straight. But basically, the truth is still the truth, and the lie is still a lie. The truth that just as behind every shred of information ever given there had to be an author, so must there also be an Author behind the immense amount of information in every living cell is still overwhelming in the face of the probability of it all having happened by chance, no matter how many more people choose to believe the latter, just as most people seem to still choose to believe and defend the official version of 9/11, no matter how ridiculous it is, or the reasons for the Iraq war. No wonder some people consider their fellowmen dumb sheep. Jesus never said it was wrong to get smart. He said Be wise as serpents and harmless as doves. Nonetheless, when youre dealing in truth, its a bit frustrating when so few are interested in your merchandize or what you have to offer, even if its for free. On the other hand, it does make you appreciate the few friends you do have, and you know they dont love you for any false reasons. You know they dont love you because youre so popular or successful.

What scares me a little about folks like Alex Jones is that they apparently sincerely believe that they can stop the New World Order from happening, and thats where they seem to lose the Big Picture that the New World Order must come to pass in order for the truth and the forces of good to ultimately prevail. What they also seem to fail to realize is that theres some bigger evil at work here than just the Bush administration, and they seem to figure, Just change the president and everything will be fine. Or, If we can just get enough people together, we will win. They fail to see the spiritual forces behind whats happening, and you cant lick the devil with axes and daggers. The only Revolution thats ever going to prevail against the tide of evil thats rising is the Revolution that started 2000 years ago, which wasnt a physical one, but a spiritual one. True that most of todays followers of that Revolutionary seem anything but revolutionary, and I wish to God I knew one minister of God with the guts, conviction and initiative of a fellow like Alex Jones. But I guess its always easier to believe that the answer lies in our flesh, in the physical, in our numbers and our own strength. Perhaps thats precisely one reason why the NWO must happen, and therell be no other way out than Gods way, no other power to save us than His, and well finally recognize that if anything is going to save us, its certainly not going to be our own arm. And as far as the defenders of the unpopular truth not having all the details of their story straight yet, its still better to have a skeleton & rough foundation of truth, than a big fat carefully designed and constructed fair-tale, as much as we may all tend to prefer the latter. The challenge is, how can you get people interested in whats real instead of the shiny fake? How can you get a kid to choose a carrot over a candy bar? Theres probably no advertising campaign in the world thats every going to successfully persuade the world to buy the healthier, wholesome option. I guess the only thing thats going to do the trick on a large scale is going to be the hard & painful road of experience & finding out where its not at. In the meantime, could I perhaps get you interested in a carrot?

Mercy, Not Sacrifice

May 18, 2008
Last week I came across the astounding video of Southern Baptist missionary Paul Washers sermon before a congregation of young people, and I immediately became a fan. Early that week I had written that I wish I knew one minister of God with the guts, conviction and initiative of someone like conspiracy hunter Alex Jones, and it seemed as though here I had found one. I was deeply moved by Washers conviction during the speech, and wholeheartedly agreed with everything he said about the pitiful condition of Western Christianity, and also loved his television interview one can find on Youtube. However, there was one thing that kept haunting me in a negative way about his sermons, and that was that he seriously seemed to question peoples Salvation, and his way of mocking the way most of us have learned to win souls, namely by asking them to pray with us to receive Jesus as their Savior. While it is true that we should make sure we are saved, and that we make our Salvation work out for us in this life with fear and trembling, and it may also be true that Jesus never asked anyone, Would you like to receive Me in your heart? and that repentance is way more than that, at the same time it also remains true that Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved, (Acts 2:21), no matter what Paul Washer, Roy Comfort or anyone else may tell us! It also remains a fact that Whosoever believeth on the Son hath eternal life (John 3:36), and that as many as received Him to them gave He power to become sons (children) of God (John 1:12) and that He even stands at the doors of the hearts of the lukewarm church and knocks, and if any man hear My voice, I will come in to him and sup with him and he with Me (Rev.3:20). And there is no amount of godly zeal that could ever destroy the universal truth of John 3:16, that God so loved the World (yes, the whole world, including not only lukewarm Western Christians and Jews, but even Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, atheists and the whole shebang) that whosoever believeth in Him should have eternal life. I have also spent some years on Latin American mission field and have had to cope with the vast difference between the fire and fervor among Christians there and the blatant lack of it in the West. Things quite simply never were the same. It took me years to get over it. But I dont find any use whatsoever in raising doubts over anyone being saved or not, or in speculating over the percentage of Christians in the West that are actually saved or not. We should remain focused on getting those saved who pretty much are sure theyre not. As far as the sinners prayer is concerned, brother Paul, it definitely did work for Me, when I was 13, although I didnt immediately turn out to be an overnight wonder, and although I probably couldnt get you to keep doubting my salvation until the end of our lives. All I know is that before I was blind, and now I see. Before I was deaf, and now I hear. Before, there was emptiness, and now there is Jesus. And I wont let anyones words, may they be ever so eloquent or anointed, take that away from me, and I would seriously issue a warning to anyone attempting to do that to anyone else. Unfortunately it is often those endowed with the greatest amount of truth that will cause the greatest harm to Gods work, as evident in the sad example of the Pharisees in Jesus time and the incessant persecution of believers by the established churches for centuries.

In my opinion, being saved is not always something plainly evident, since it can take years for that seed of having received Jesus in our hearts to sprout and surface. We will be rewarded according to our works (without which our faith is dead,) but we are never saved by them (Eph.2:8,9, see also 1Cor.3:1115). People who go around repeating how they doubt the Salvation of others must either be paranoid that there wont be enough room in Heaven for everyone, or the prospects of so many less deserving than they winding up in the same place anyhow makes them feel less special. There are hundreds of verses in the Bible about the vastness of Gods mercy, but we dont seem to grant our lesser brethren that mercy. Perhaps thats why Jesus told those among us with a tendency toward self-righteousness, Go and learn what this means: I will have mercy, not sacrifice (Mt.9:13) It also reminds me of the parable of the workers who volunteered to work in the Husbands vineyard but didnt go, while those who said they werent going to, actually wound up doing the work. You never know whos going to pick up the plough you left in the field when you got overwhelmed by your frustration and bitterness. Of course, one factor that probably influences the No, youre not saved attitude of some is the false belief in a Pre-Tribulation Rapture. I whole-heartedly agree that most of todays Christians would not deserve just being whisked out of this world before the great purification of the church the Antichrist and the Tribulation are purposely destined by God to bring about. But thats not what the Scriptures say anyway, if you care to read them properly.

Huge Surprises
May 20, 2008

There is a series of online videos out from Lionandlamb ministries, stating that the Pharisees in Jesus Day were all members of a secret society which today is called Cabala. While at first glance this seems to be a convincing argument (and the author of the videos states it with an effort to make it come across as fact, rather than a theory), and it does seem to make sense in the light of such dreaded Scriptures as John 8:44, where Jesus tells them openly, Ye are of your father, the devil, or many others where He blasts the Pharisees, about which many theologians argue that Jesus couldnt have possibly said or meant that After all, He was talking to Jews, and the Jews are Gods people, right? While I dont doubt that members of occult secret societies may had infiltrated the governing body of Jewish religious establishment of those days, just as they have allegedly (and obviously) infiltrated todays established religion, I see a few problems with that theory. First of all, we have members of the Sanhedrin, Pharisees, who believed in Jesus, even if they had to do so secretly like Nicodemus, who came to Jesus by night in John 3, or Gamaliel, who defended the disciples before the Sanhedrin in Acts. Certainly they werent Satanists. Secondly, labeling the Pharisees as members of a secret satanic society creates a comfortable gap between them and us. After all, we dont belong to a satanic society, so weve got nothing to do with

those satanic people who were responsible for Jesus death. No, were the good ones, and they were the bad ones. Im afraid that wont do. In my own personal experience, todays established religionists are a lot more like the Pharisees than they would like to believe. Lets have a look from the Pharisees point of view in the days of the apostles: here was this strange, new, dangerous sect emerging, with scary new doctrines that threatened to overthrow all their good old traditions, and the way they had believed and practiced religion for so long. How many people attending church do you know who would react differently to that kind of threat, nowadays, than the Pharisees did to Jesus and the Early Christians? Its easy to say, Well, they were of the Devil and belonged to a satanic sect, now, 2000 years after it happened and theres no proof whatsoever to back up that theory. Its a lot harder to say, Hmmm, looks like the Pharisees had a definite problem with self-righteousness, and they were quite stuck in their old religious rut, they thought they knew better than God as to who and what kind of people He would use. Because that sounds a lot more familiar and closer to home, doesnt it? The theory also takes any guilt from the general Jewish population of that day, by creating a separation between them and their satanic rulers. But you cant tell me that it was just a few members of a secret society yelling Crucify Him! and Free Barabbas! before Pilate (see also Mt.27:25). Many people seem to forget that God has made a new Covenant with man, a covenant of the spirit, not of flesh, and that He is not a Jew, which is one outwardly (carnally, physically), but he who is one inwardlyin the spirit (Romans 2:28, 29). By their fruits ye shall know them. Maybe a whole lot more people than we think are going to turn out to have believed the wrong things, no matter how convinced they may be that they are in the right, just like the Pharisees were, and maybe a whole lot more of us will turn out to have sided with the wrong guys, opposing and oppressing those who look a lot more like little David with his slingshot confronting Goliath than the guys were siding with. Not all Palestinians are terrorists, nor are all Muslims terrorists. In fact, there used to be more Christians among the Palestinian population than among the rest of the population of Israel, and there probably still are, except that we never hear much of their side of the story these days. Not much of anything gets through that wall the Israelis have built in order to keep out the undesired elements. I really wonder how God would look on all these things. And from the way I know Him, I think many of us are in for some huge surprises. The truth, ladies & gentlemen, is and has always been terribly unpopular in a world run by the father of lies, even or should I say, especially in the circles of established religion.

Sin is a lot closer to home than many of us have the guts to admit to ourselves. It doesnt take a secret satanic society to oppose the true Messiah and His strange new sect. All it takes is some damn clever lies of the Devil, and from what I can tell, those are more abundant than they ever were.

Who God Is NOT

May 29, 2008

Theres a lot of people out there doing a lot of things in the name of God, which I firmly believe the GodWho-is-Love and God, Who He really is, does not have anything to do with, nor would He want to be associated with them, much less held responsible for them. Sometimes, in order to discover Who God really is, we first have to clear away the rubble of the images we have made ourselves of Him, and define what God is not: God is not a harsh dictator or cruel, merciless tyrant Who judges the innocent. He is not the cruel Father as which some would depict Him, Who gives us the greatest gift ever given to man, namely Salvation through the blood of His Son, only to take it away from us again if we dont behave. God is not partial. He does not side with the rich and powerful, even if they claim to be His children, as long as those children of His use their power and wealth to exploit their poor and weaker brethren. Love thy neighbor as thyself still goes hand in hand with Thou shalt love the Lord thy God. We cannot love God, Whom we have not seen, if we cannot love our brethren, whom we have seen, and from the way some treat their neighbors and brethren, it becomes obvious that their supposed love for God is a farce (Mt.22:37-40, 1Jn.4:20). God is not exclusively the God of the rich and powerful. The meek shall inherit the earth. He filleth the hungry with goods, but the rich He hath sent empty away (Mt.5:5, Lk.1:53, Jam.5:1-3). God is not mute. Its not true that He has stopped speaking 2000 years ago. He still says, Call unto Me,

and I will show you great and mighty things which thou knowest not (Jer.33:3). God is not responsible for the countless people who starve each year when its within our financial power to save them from starvation (Jam.4:17). God is not blind to the circumstances which have brought an unbeliever into His current state. If someone refuses to believe in Him or His goodness because of the sheer lack of any of His qualities in His earthly representatives, then He will not hold the unbeliever responsible, but those who claimed to represent Him. God is, quite simply, not like us. He lacks each and every one of our negative human qualities which influence our way of seeing things: He is not stingy. He is not self-righteous. He is not a liar. He doesnt side with the strong and powerful to get an advantage out of that acquaintance. He quite simply doesnt need their help. He prefers to side with those who need His (Is.55:8-9; Num.23:19). He is also not the prudish God as which some portray Him, since He Himself is the One Who equipped us with our means of procreation, a task apparently so important to Him that it was the first commandment He ever uttered to man (Gen.1:28). God is not a fool. You may be able to fool most of the people most of the time, but you cant fool Him (Gal.6:7). God is not a conservative, stale, brittle preserver of the old, much less of any man-made status quo, but says, Behold (look!), I make all things new! (Rev.21:5). God is not a respecter of persons, including their rank, status or achievement, which may only make us more accountable in His eyes, whereas He calls the children His own, and that of such is the Kingdom of Heaven (Acts 10:34, Jam. 3:1, Mk.10:14, Mt.18:1-6). God does not run a One-Man-Show, nor a 3-Man-Show, merely assisted and applauded by the angels, but His theme has always been Family and teamwork, and He gratefully takes all the help He can get (even yours, if you will). If you dont believe it, just have a look at creation, which describes the way He is (Rom.1:20). God seems to be constantly recruiting workers for His harvest, obviously due to the lack of them, and sometimes its those one would least expect to, who wind up doing the work (Mt.9:37, 20:1, 21:28-31). Finally, God is not nearly as fond of pompous buildings as we may think He is. In fact, He quite simply does not live there (Acts 7:48-49). You cant put Him in a box, no matter how pretty you try to make it.

What's Our Problem?

June 5, 2008 Our problem is that we think we're so smart and know anything, when we haven't really got a clue. Our sin is our presumption to claim that we can actually see, when we are totally blind to what's right in front of our noses. Our sin is our unbelievable pride. We discover the miracles of life with our electronic microscopes and say, "Nah, that's nuthin'. Anybody could have made that, in fact, it probably made itself." We close ourselves off to true information that's all around us; messages from our Creator that constantly shout, "Look around: I'm right here!" But we willingly choose to ignore Him. We choose to be blind. And as He said Himself, "None are so blind as those who refuse to see." The complexity of the structure and modus operandi of a single cell and its integrated communication system that makes all life possible are the greatest known single source of information and intelligence in the known universe, but we just assume, "Aw, that's just a little blob of chemicals that came to life once when struck by a lightning." I personally never saw anything drastically improve from non-life to life by being struck by a lightning, but I guess scientists who are paid for upholding a wobbly theory like Evolution are forced to live in a different reality. It's our arrogance that blinds us. Its our indifference toward our Maker that deprives us of the privilege to live life to the full, the way it ought to have been lived. But we don't even know how to live, because we constantly choose the path that seems right in our own eyes but turns out to be the ways of death. We congratulate ourselves for our "progress" and technical advances, when most of what those "advances" result in is more death, more suffering for others, ever greater pollution and the impending destruction of our planet, because with the same indifference and contempt we treat out Maker we naturally also treat our fellowman and our environment. The art of war is still what we're best at, and what our governments spend most of our money on. Wow, yeah, seems like we really have learned something. Knowing what we were going to be up to, the Bible promised 2000 years ago that "He will destroy those that destroy the earth," when we were far from being capable of doing so.

Those smart alecs who are so dead sure they're smarter than everybody else, including God are taking us all along for a ride on their highway to hell, and most of us don't even notice it, and what's worse, most of us don't seem to mind. As long as we've got our fancy gimmicks to distract us, we won't say a word, no, won't even so much as raise an eyebrow. After all, our TVs, our Gameboys, our I-pods, our Big Macs and our BMWs are proof enough to us that the System is working. Who the hell cares about 10.000 people in other countries starving each day, or a bunch of Arabs killed by our guns? They're all terrorists anyway, right? Or, as one Abu Graib war hero put it, "Anything that wears a turban is guilty." Yes, people, we're really enlightened. It only looks to me like most of us are going to get a big shock when God turns on the light for real, and we get a look at the way He sees things, namely the way they really are, and not the pitiful concoction of our imagination we currently call reality... When I say, we, Im definitely including myself. I frequently find myself afflicted with the same blindness to His views and REAL-ity, so Im not just pointing a finger at everybody else. Like Jonah I frequently find myself inside the darkness of the belly of the whale due to my own stubbornness and insistence on running the opposite direction God tells me. But like Jonah I also have found out time and again that its true, that Salvation is of the Lord. When we call on Him when we dont know whats happening, or our own way of seeing things has driven us against a stone wall and we need Someone to pick up and mend the pieces, He always comes through. People dont believe me when I say God talks to me. They just figure talking isnt included in Gods repertoire. That Hes incapable of communicating. Thats the arrogance Im talking about. How can we be so presumptuous to say that the divine Author of the entire, unfathomable sum of information that lies embedded in His creation, the One Who has brought forth the universe by means of mere utterance of His Words, should be incapable of communicating? Why should He bother with someone like you? Because He loves me. Just as He loves you, and He would really like to surprise you pleasantly by filling you in on some essential details concerning life, if youd just be willing to open your ears to His voice, your eyes to His views, and your heart to His loving vibes and give Him a chance (Excerpts from the chapter Whats Up? in the free eBook The Deeper Meaning of Everything.)

The Discrimination of the Invisibles

June 8, 2008

Humans definitely tend to being narrow-minded, stuck-on-themselves creatures. We always have to discriminate someone. Whether it's folks of a different race, belief system, opinion, outward appearance or from another country than ours, another soccer team, age-group, or whatever, we tend to reject and antagonize them. Whoever or whatever's not like us isn't cool. One species or party we specially discriminate against is the invisibles. It's probably the one thing we hold most against God: "It's His own fault if we don't believe in Him. Why can't He make Himself visible, like everybody else?" That's not what we actually say or think consciously with those words, but that's the way we act. "Why should I give any marbles to God when I can't even see Him?" "Why should I be interested in His strange, invisible Kingdom, when all that interests me right now is what I can see, touch and feel and caters to my physical cravings?" "Why the heck should I be interested in anything that doesn't live up to those qualities?" Especially members of the younger generation, who have had impulses from the media cater to them basically non-stop since the moment they were born, find the invisible realm to be extremely "boring," to say the least. Well, y'all know what I think about boredom... What I mean is, it's pretty tough trying to get folks interested in the Spirit World these days. At least the good side of it. But is it really God's fault that we seem to be more interested in His opponent and find whatever he has to offer a lot more intriguing? Is God really that boring? Or is something wrong with our appetite?

Probably a lot stems from wrong concepts, too. Our classical concept of God includes the notion, for instance, that He doesn't like or approve of some of the most fun and delightful things in life. We consider that we have to be "bad" if we really want to have some fun. There's a lot of jokes going around about "no place to meet old friends like hell," and that that's supposed to be the place where most of the fun is happening. Well, not in my opinion, nor my idea of Heaven, which, as far from the norm as it may be, is only a fraction of a shadow of what it really is and is going on there... Whereas some of the reports I hear about hell tend to be rather disappointing, to say the least. So, what's the score with God's invisibility trip, and why can't He just make it easy on us and show Himself? Like Phillip, one of the disciples said, "Just show us the Father, Lord, and it's enough!" In other words, "Show me God, dude, and then I'll believe for real! All doubts finally eliminated." Sure enough! But that would be a wee bit too easy! We'd all be so intimidated, surely you couldn't speak about "free will" anymore. We'd all know that "Woe is us" if we didn't behave & follow E.T.'s advice to "be good!" So, God made some rules to this game called life, and in order to be a winner in this game, you just can't be as dumb as to only believe in what you see. The way to score is by means of a magical, mysterious ingredient called faith. It's by faith that we can skip that bummer called death, for instance. Faith is also what makes God like us. So much, in fact, that He'll adopt us when we've got it and calls us His own children. Whereas without it, it is impossible to please Him (Hebrews 11:6). Faith is like a secret super weapon in this game of life, comparable to some of those computer games where you can pick up certain super powers in hidden corners that will enable you to kill like 10.000 monsters at a time, instead of just one or instead of you being eaten by them... It is described as "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." Actually, the word "substance" here comes from the original Greek word "hupostasis" which means title deed. You own the thing you hope for, if you have the faith for it! And Luther translated the word "evidence" as "not doubting." You don't doubt the existence of the Invisibles, including their Head Honcho. Well, the good news is - that whole shebang called Spirit World isn't going to stay invisible forever. Sooner or later we're going to see it. The only question is, how surprised or shocked are you going to be? How strange & alien will it all feel to you? Or are you going to feel right at home? So, one mindset that's going to help you prepare a little bit, is to get rid of that discriminating attitude against invisible folks. They're really not that bad. And boring? Man, you have no idea what you're talking about! In fact, you have no idea what fun really is, compared to what's happening out there!

Computer games & Action thrillers are only cheap counterfeits of the Real Thing that's going down all around us in the invisible Realm. The problem is that just because it's invisible, we figure it's not real, when in fact it's a lot more real than our finite, temporal world, and the problem isn't with them, it's with us. We just can't see'em. But you will, if you start believing... and, well, even if you don't. It just might take you a bit longer.

Dreams of Stardom (Or: News from the Live-Circuit)

July 12, 2008

There was a time I used to play anything that sounded nice, just to impress myself and tickle people's ears. I think my final break with any ideas and aspirations of possible future stardom set in after I saw one of my favourite bands I used to cover a lot, Del Amitri from Scotland, live in a little town in Switzerland called Herisau. It turned out that a substantial part of the audience had shown up for the opening act, some Swiss TV soap opera star who now tried to become a pop star, too. As soon as Justin Currie (front man of Del Amitri and one of my heroes at that time) got on stage with his band and their antiquated gear (the Swiss opening act had all the latest hi-tech gimmicks), some of the teenies in the first row actually turned around, away from the stage. They gave the band their backs. They couldn't handle any real music. I was thankful that a little while later a halfway sufficient amount of decent music started coming out from the Christian Alternative and Independent scene to quench my appetite for new music, like Shane Barnard, Jeremy Camp, Caedmon's Call, etc., and I sold my entire CD collection on eBay. I've reached a point where I don't see why I should be wasting my time listening to music that may sound very appealing to my personal taste but renders virtually zero nourishing value for my soul. I've come to appreciate my time as something too valuable for that. And the amazing

thing is, there seems to be a certain percentage of the general public getting on the same wavelength. While the vast majority may still be mainly interested in the art of busting brain cells in record time, a surprising amount want more out of live-music these days than mere entertainment. They're finding out that there is such a thing as quality music that feeds your soul, and they're thankful when there's an occasional musician or act around and available who can deliver that. A certain brand of people are simply becoming tired of listening to nice music that has got virtually nothing to say, or advocates witchcraft or utters permanent laments about not-so-hot relationships. People are becoming aware that there's something fishy about this world and its current System, after all, like Jesus said, and they don't want to be caught with their pants down when the curtain hits the ground. And I believe that that's one reason why we're still in the business while other live artists in our region have disappeared and vanished. With fuel prices that make you wonder whether you should take the bike to the mall, instead of the car, not everybody's in the mood for hiring a live act for their event, and if they do, they simply prefer to offer their guests something decent, instead of the usual humdrum. Anyway, that's the news from the circuit, as I can see it. If you're dreaming about becoming a rock-star, I'm afraid you've picked the wrong time to be born, because I personally would be very surprised if things will keep going the way they are, substantially longer. And if you do decide to try and make a living off playing music, earnestly pursue to give people more than just hollow entertainment. In tough times, a little ray of hope and a comforting voice are much appreciated. Who knows, eventually the rest of those who don't have a clue what's going on might even wake up, too, and come and listen to you as well. The world doesn't need another star, or - as I wrote in a recent song, "another pair of feet of clay," but they might slowly be getting ready for a new "furious voice for the truth"... Oh, and if you have any choice between merely tickling peoples ears with nice music and popular songs, and actually giving them something to feed their soul, then Id highly recommend avoid that tempting path of the least resistance. It may be a tougher road to really deliver something you have to say, especially when it comes to the truth about society at large, but as folks are finding out (and even I did), what really defines who you are and brings out the best in you is a little bit of struggle and some swimming against the current. Show the world who you really are, and dont just settle for being another ear tickler. Take it from someone who found out the hard way.

No Business Like Blow Business

July 16, 2008

No, this is not some obscene post advertising blow-jobs. I'm talking about the evidently most lucrative business in the world, of blowing things like houses, towns and people to bits. "Want more business? Do War-Business!"

Disappointed? Thought so.

I don't know who originally came up with the slogan, "Make love, not war!" (probably some hippie in the 60s), but the Devil's slogan must definitely be the exact opposite: "Make war, not love!" - It's so much more lucrative! Strangely enough, some of his staunchest disciples are professing to be Christians. You wouldn't believe how many of the big, well-known corporations tie into the war-business. I wouldn't have believed it, if I hadn't read this article, & apparently there's more bad news where that came from. The more I find out about politics, and especially about the politics of one nation boasting to be the most powerful on earth (for how much longer?) in particular, the more I find confirmation therein of things I have believed to be true for decades. Not because I was smart enough to come up with them by myself, but because I was told, or rather, I read them, in small, A5 pamphlets called MO-Letters, written by the deceased founder of the movement I subscribe to since I found Jesus there at the age of 13. Everything he ever said about the country he was from seemed an exaggeration back then. It doesnt anymore now. Everything he said about the church system he had come out of in disgust is something that slowly other Christians around the world are waking up to.

One such Christian in particular, my wife recently had the pleasure to meet, since God saw to it to send him into our remote corners of the utmost boonies and backwoods of Southern Germany. Im currently reading his book So You Dont Want to Go to Church Anymore, which could be described as a gentler drug rehabilitation therapy for church junkies than anything I have so far slapped in the worlds face, since its administered by someone whos an ex-junkie himself. Since I personally had any possibly existing illusions about where church is at devastated by the age of ten, Wayne Jacobsen is certainly the man to bring it home in a gentler way, encouraging believers around the world who are seeking refuge outside of the box of the church system, that God loves them anyway, and more than they can ever fathom. I havent finished reading the book yet, but so far, at chapter six, it has driven home the point that what God does matters infinitely more than whatever efforts we can come up with ourselves better than any other book I know of that you can download for free on the Internet. In fact, even what God does in allowing our illusions about the world we live in to be shattered, He is doing more for us than we could ever begin to see right now, while were still in the middle of it. It seems as if God is waking up people around the world. Hes using a gentler method with some than with others, but lets just hope and pray that it wont be too late for most of us to pull the plug on our passive participation, or at least on our silent approval of blow-business!

The Gospel of Acquisition

August 1, 2008

The other night, after having read 2 recent articles on American warmongerism by Charley Reese from Antiwar.com, I wrote a rap about Babylon the Great, consisting mainly of verses from Revelation 17 and 18. And it got me into wondering, what exactly is the "wine of her fornication" that she makes the nations of the world drunk with? It's obvious that the globe is being affected by a bug, and most churches seem to have the tendency to blame it all on sex and make people's natural sex drive the true culprit. After all, "fornication" does sound as if it's supposed to have sexual implications. But if the Lord is our Husband, and we're not supposed to have any other gods before Him, or other lovers, I'd say that sexuality - as much as it may be promoted in the media - is not the bigger culprit, but materialism is. After all, what's supposedly the one thing that makes everybody happy - even those who are not the least bit interested in sex, and if they are, what can get them any amount of it they like? Money. The primary Gospel of the American media since its beginnings has been the gospel of acquisition, prosperity, gain, financial success, affluenza, as some have started to call it, in short: MONEY. After all, Jesus never said, "You cannot be a slave to God and your own penis at the same time," (sorry for once again being so terribly blunt here, but, after all, let's not forget, it's just a body part He created, knowing fully well what He was doing, like with all the rest of them), nor does the Bible refer to that as the "root of all evil," as much as some preachers make it sound like that. But what the Bible does refer to as the root of all evil is the love of money, and Jesus did say, "You cannot serve God and Mammon (the god of wealth)." And yet that is what millions of people try or pretend to do, and probably one of the reasons why the Devil has just been contentedly standing by, watching the growth of American churches over the past decades. As long as they preach the Gospel of Affluence, it doesn't matter to him if they sneak in a bit of the Jesus stuff. After all, as long as Jesus is just one of the "products" they're trying to sell, their god is still money.

Incidentally, the One everybody tends to leave out of the equation doesn't seem to be all too thrilled about this development, and as it so happens, the plug is being pulled. - Quietly, in the background, since the real crisis going on right now is the one neither one of the two presidential candidates would dream of addressing, and the god in whom Americans really trust, the once almighty dollar, is going down, like that old song by the 70s pop band Status Quo I never particularly liked, "Down, down, deeper and down..." If you still don't have a clue what I'm talking about, maybe here's an illustration you can relate to: During our recent movie night we watched "Singing In the Rain" as a feature to watch with our daughter (partly exposing the deceit Hollywood has made a business of, and yet at the same time being another parade example of it), and afterwards we saw "Freedom Land," a somewhat depressing, yet ultimately much more realistic show of the real America, as millions of not-so-blessed real people know it. There's a definite, deep contrast between what we're made to believe and reality. The nations of the earth are drunk with the desire to have the pretty fake world that's being portrayed to them in American TV shows from Timbuktu to Moose Jaw. The "wine of fornication" that makes God really sick (when we swallow it) is the stuff we've been brainwashed with for so long that it's extremely hard to get out of our system. The god of wine is having a heyday, because he's getting us addicted to more things than we and our children have ever had to get addicted to. The wine of fornication is making a junkie out of you, even if you live in a slum in India or in a beduin tent in a desert somewhere, as long as you have a satellite dish and an i-pod. And it doesn't have as much to do with your natural sex drive (although, admittedly, people can get addicted to sex, too), as it does with making sure you take your part in the machine to keep the show rolling. As for Charley Reese's call for "pulling the plug on the war state", I hate to be the one busting such idealistic illusions, and breaking the news to such fine patriots, but I'm afraid this isn't going to happen on behalf of any of the inmates of the greatest rehab camp on earth (most of whom haven't even grasped yet that they're addicted and need help), but the "pulling of the plug" is going to have to be done by the one to whom it is given to do the dirty work, aided by the ten mysterious kings described in Revelation and elsewhere who "hate the whore" and are tired of her selfish and destructive ways of getting what she wants and sucking the life out of the rest of the planet in the process. We may not be quite there yet, but as long as American leadership keeps following its current course, we're headed in that direction, and when it's going to happen, it's going to happen very quickly. In 60 minutes, to be precise. One hour (Rev.18:10, 17, 19). And down with her will go her pimps: the preachers of a christ who'll buy you affluence in return for your tithes, and the very god everybody's been worshiping all along, as cash will be replaced by the mark in your right hand or forehead that will enable you to buy or sell from then on, eliminating the root of all evil... or not? We'll see. In the meantime, if anyone has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says unto the churches and get ready for one heck of a withdrawal period on the horizon...

The Quest for Intelligent Life...on the Web

August 6, 2008

In search of intelligent life on the web I came across a forum thread entitled, "Can Intelligent People Believe in God?" A truly intelligent question would have been, "Can intelligent people not believe in God?" And the cortrect answer would be, "ONLY intelligent people believe in God." And that isn|t just on my own puny authority, but on the authority of the Book revered by millions as the divinely inspired Word of God... In the book of Psalms, the greatest leader the nation of Israel ever had wrote, "The fool has said in his heart, 'There is no God.' We know that every bit of information in the world, every letter, every email, every postcard, poem, telegram, phone call or drawing in a cave by a so-called "cave man" must have an author. Thus, only a moron can seriously assume that the immense amount of information contained in one single cell, which, if we'd stick it in books would form a tower to the moon and back, would have come about by itself, or the great supposed father & mother of us all: coincidence. Just because the existence of God eludes the capacities of their finite reasoning & ratio (or ration?) of their rationale, they confine reality to the scope of their own minds, by which they are so awed that they couldn't possibly allow for anything greater and more wonderful in the universe to exist. Since my query only yielded a handful of halfway satisfactory results, & even Google Almighty couldn't help me out, I remembered something Kent Hovind once said about how scientists keep searching for intelligent life in outer space when he hadn't found much of it on this, our own planet yet. I like Kent Hovind. I share his opinion on many issues, especially golfers. Every time I ride my bike past the local golf court I pray, "Jesus, protect me from those morons!" (One of them nearly killed us once.) So I change my query to "Kent Hovind" for the latest news on the man & find blogs of perplexed Christians who don't understand how a man of God could possibly wind up in prison. Shows how much they read their Bible. Nor do they seem to care much about the plight & lives of countless believers who have shared similar fates. They just figure, a good Christian ought to be a tax paying patriot who doesn't get in trouble (even in a country where taxing the people is against its own constitution, & the guys who pocket their cash have anything but patriotic, much less Christian intentions). So, just as anywhere else, quality is rare on the web. And as for intelligent life, perhaps I should just continue studying the inner life of microbes for now... It seems to be more promising at present.

Why "Babylon" Can't be Rome

August 7, 2008

In reply to Frank's comment on my blog entry "Babylon the Whore," I'd like to get into the details a little deeper, of why I disagree, and can't believe that the Roman Catholic church is supposed to be "Babylon" of Revelations 17 & 18. I already brought out some of these points in my recent entry about "The Gospel of Acquisition," but I just read a wonderful book review, confirming my beliefs once more, but also helping me realize that the materialism is only one side of the coin, and the lesser of 2 evils. Certainly the Catholice Church is just as guilty of materialism as anyone, there's no doubt about that. But there are a few descriptions of the entity Babylon that simply couldn't be ascribed to either Rome, nor ancient Babylon somehow mysteriously revived (especially in the light of that country - Iraq - having been wrecked & devastated for at least the next century), which I'd like to point out, that seem to point at some bigger culprit than the two combined, however piously innocent she's trying to come across. One of the principal reasons why Rome couldn't possibly be synonymous with the "fallen lady" of Revelation is that it's commonly accepted by Bible scholars that "the 10 horns which...shall hate the whore, and shall make her desolate " (Rev.17:16) represent the 10 leading European nations, of which Italy is obviously one, so, it's impossible for Rome to represent both, the Whore and the capital of the 10 horns. As I already brought out in my study of Rev.-17 & 18, we're talking about "that great city, which reigneth over the kings of the earth" (17:18). While that may have been the case with Rome during the time John wrote this, and he may even have believed that he was writing about Rome at the time, when we look at the present (for which those prophecies and revelations obviously given, since we are living in the times that see the Endtime events unfolding before us), then Rome hardly has a say in a lot of countries. Let me list some of the most outstanding ones for you: 1) Roman Catholicism is completely irrelevant to Russia, since they have their own, orthodox version of Catholiscism, which has nothing to do with the Roman version, nor does the Vatican have any say over it, much less does it "reign" over any secular areas of Russian life. 2) China, which by some is already hailed the "next superpower" and the greatest stronghold of socialism presently on earth, may definitely be infected with the Western bug of capitalism and materialism and somewhat intimidated by not so much the American government as the United Nations, but certainly it would be absurd to indicate that Rome exerts any power over China. Subtract Russia and China, and you've already got 2 of the biggest, most powerful and most populated countries on earth which definitely don't fall into the group of countries that

Rome exerts power over. The same goes for smaller countries like Korea, Myanmar, Malaysia and virtually all Muslim countries, along with countries like India, which may have a few Catholic missions here or there, but saying that Rome "reigns" over them would be sheer exaggeration. The only city that comes close to fulfilling the criteria of "reigning" over those countries is the seat of the United Nations. - However, the real power is not found within the walls of the U.N., but in the building across the street, where world policies and wars for tomorrow are being planned and cooked up today, the CFR, some of whose key members also reside in that great city which makes Rome look like a pueblito (little village) in comparison. We can argue about the scope of influence that the Catholic Church is exerting over the nations on international levels, compared to the American Mass media. We can also argue over the amount of damage being done by either. At least the Catholic Church is still somewhat devoted to spreading somewhat Christian virtues, but you couldn't possibly say that about Mickey Mouse or Rambo. Then we've got the "Blood of prophets, saints, and all that were slain upon the earth" found in her. That may have been the case with Rome 2000 years ago, but if you're familiar with the history of the past 200 years, Rome looks like an innocent choir boy, compared to your average G.I. raping Iraqi teenagers... Let's say, if I had a choice between a ticket to Rome and one to N.Y.C. at the time of judgment, I'd prefer Rome any day, although I hate big cities per se. Besides, it wouldn't take a whole hour to destroy Rome. It might not take an hour to destroy N.Y., either, but I'm still not sure whether I believe that the destruction and judgment will be limited to that city alone. In my opinion, the refusal to see America's guilt and the interpretation that Rome is the big culprit is just another pitiful case of wishful thinking and self-deception. There was a time when I tended to see the Babylon of Revelation as a solely spiritual entity, which is the current doctrine of my own faith community (so please, don't blame them for my anti-U.S. rantings), although nearly 40 years ago our founder taught without hesitation that Babylon was America. That was during the Vietnam era, and our group's nickname for Nixon was "Nitler." Well, we all know now that indeed a lot worse could befall the world than Nixon and Watergate. You'll definitely find more parallels drawn by Americans between Hitler and Bush. But you can't really destroy a spiritual entity with fire, and not within 60 minutes. You can't see the smoke of a spiritual entity burning and sailors standing from afar bewailing it. It must be a physical place that Revelation 17 and 18 is talking about. And I simply believe that there is a greater sin to be judged here than the sins of the Catholic Church. A sin which has finally been publicly addressed in a book by one courageous Christian writer who must have found one other courageous publisher, unless he published it himself. Ladies and gentlemen, let me humbly present to you my hero of the day, Lawrence M. Vance, in his own historic words from his excellent book I honestly urge you to buy, (because if you don't, who will?):

"Christians who condone the warfare state and its nebulous crusades against 'evil' have been duped. There is nothing 'Christian' about the state's aggressive militarism, its senseless wars, its interventions into the affairs of other countries, and its expanding empire. 'The chief wonder is that Christians, followers of the Prince of Peace, should have concurred in this mad idolatry of strife, and thus been inconsistent not only with themselves, but with the very genius of their system.' The fact that a government claims a war is just is irrelevant, for American history is replete with examples of American presidents who have exaggerated, misinformed, misrepresented, and lied to deceive the American people into supporting wars that they would not have supported if they had known the facts. Many supporters of the senseless war in Iraq are high on religion. Add a religious element to a war and the faithful will come out in droves in support of it. In the case of the current war in Iraq this is easy to do. Because the United States is supposedly a 'Christian nation,' the war can be turned into a modern-day crusade since Iraq is a 'Muslim' nation. "Christian warmongers would rather be associated with Bush and the war than with people whom they and others have deemed undesirable. In actuality, however, they are choosing to be associated with a war criminal and murder than with the truth just because some people who are usually wrong happen to be right on this particular issue. Rather than receiving a proclamation of liberty, what many people in foreign countries receive instead are threats, bombs, and bullets. From a Christian perspective there is only one way to describe U.S. foreign policy: It is evil. It was evil before the United States invaded Iraq, and it would still be evil if the United States withdrew all of its forces from Iraq tomorrow. It is because of our foreign policy that the U.S. military has becomethrough its wars, interventions, and occupationsthe greatest force for evil in the world. U.S. foreign policy sows discord among nations, stirs up strife where none existed, intensifies the hatred that many foreigners around the world have for Americans and each other, and creates terrorists faster than we can kill them. Is asking God to bless and protect the troops as they shoot, bomb, maim, mine, destroy, 'interrogate,' and kill for a rogue state with an evil foreign policy consistent with the Christianity you find in the New Testament?"

Sample THIS!

August 8, 2008

If I were a preacher, I'd tell my congregation at every opportunity that just coming to listen to me and whatever I'd have to tell them would be no substitute for finding out what God has to tell them personally through His Word, both recorded and living. Let's be honest, how many people think that they don't have to read the Bible on their own, as long as they attend church on Sundays? And that's why you've got all those millions of Christians believing the false doctrines of "eternal insecurity" (that you can lose your Salvation at any moment you sin), the "PreTribulation Rapture" (that Jesus will come to take them to Heaven before the Great Tribulation), and supporting political leaders in mass murder, pledging their allegiance to an earthly nation, instead of finding out personally how God really thinks about these things. They're putting their faith in the words of men, instead of the Words of God. I'd tell them that their personal relationship with God is more important than going to church. Faith in God comes through hearing the Word of God (Romans 10:17), and if you want faith the only thing that can save us by His Grace - then you'd better listen to what God has to say, and not anybody else, unless you can be 100% certain that what they're saying is inspired by God, and there is no way you can be 100% certain of that unless you personally know the Word of God, and know how and where to find the gifts of the Spirit, such as the gift of discernment. In fact, if I were a preacher, I'd probably quit preaching, and rather tune in on one person or a handful of individuals at a time, instead of delighting in the sound of my own voice as it rang through the halls of my church, because neither Jesus, nor any of His closest followers were ever "preachers" nor into mass evangelism, if you carefully read the Bible. The so-called "Sermon on the Mount" wasn't a sermon at all. Jesus left the multitude behind, went into a mountain (not a hill!) and only His disciples came to Him to hear what He had to say. The "Sermon on the Mount" was a revolutionary instruction talk given by the greatest Revolutionary of all times to His closest followers only, and thankfully, one of them - Matthew - formerly of the utterly despised occupation of collecting taxes from the Jews for the Roman invaders - had the skill and brains to write it down! There are a few occasions in the Book of Acts where Peter or Paul address a larger crowd of people, but those are exceptional. Most of the time they were too busy hiding from the

authorities, because true believers were persecuted for 300 years before the Roman empire "converted" and "legalized" Christianity according to the motto, "If you can't lick'em, join'em!" The result was the death of Christianity and the birth of Churchianity, and God is calling His true believers today out of that mock-up, to get ready for the Real Thing. Most Christians today probably don't know that the only places where early Christians worshiped for 300 years before they converted the pagan temples into Christian "churches" - were the houses of believers and the catacombs beneath Rome, and - weather permitting - the great wide open. Most Christians probably don't even know the true meaning of the word "church" itself, coming from the Greek "ecclesia," meaning "the called out ones." God is calling His believers to step out of the false religious Systems of their day, to trade in the Big Lie for the truth, and that simply doesn't (usually) happen in large scale "revivals" and "awakenings" which most preachers in the U.S. dream of happening. What they call revivals are usually short bouts of electric shocks infused into the dead body of the church, making it look alive for a few moments before it sinks back into its sepulcher, worse off than before. I'd really make an effort to be more politically correct, just like your average preacher, if I thought there was enough time for that. But I don't. The Devil is rapidly taking over, and his flood of lies in which the vast majority is drowning certainly seems overwhelming, compared to the relatively few voices of truth out there. The neat thing is, that God doesn't rely on numbers. If one of His voices can chase a thousand of enemy forces, then 2 can chase ten thousand, His Word says, and He is not limited to save by many or by few. See, there's really a lot of wonderful stuff the Bible has to say that you might not even beware of, because you're relying too much on what somebody else has to say about what God has to say. If I were a preacher, I'd tell you today, tomorrow and everyday: "For God's sake, don't listen to me! Listen to God!" Perhaps I'd give each member of my congregation a Bible in their hands and tell them, "Read!" And perhaps after a while they could share with everyone what they discovered... That's what I'd call "church." A group of people obeying God's call to come out of the box of conventional worship and trying to find out what He has to say to each of them. And there'd be no way of stopping there, of course, until we had put into practice what He'd just shown us... But, as I say, these sort of things usually don't happen on a large scale. We can be happy if they happen at all. Even if once in a single life-time. If I were a preacher, I'd ask you to tell me to "Shut up and let's get down to business getting the real job done for Jesus & win those who don't want to go to church because what they need in their life is not a sermon but a sample of the real thing." - Just give'em Jesus & tell'em to "Sample this!"

Dog See Dog (Or: Jesus' Example Vs. Current I, Me, Mine Mindsets)

7/13/08
Most people - and I'm talking about those who call themselves Christians - don't seem to agree with Paul of Tarsus, the great evangelist without whom Christianity may never have seen the light of day, when he wrote, "I know that in me - that is, in my flesh - dwelleth no good thing" (Romans 7:18). Most people nowadays seem to think that whatever comes out of their flesh automatically has to be good. Be it because they're Christians, Americans, or just their wonderful selves. They automatically figure that whatever is "theirs," their country, their religion, their family, age group, etc., has to be best for the simply reason that it's "theirs." Totally oblivious to the fact that Jesus of Nazareth had quite a different attitude. When He was surrounded by a large crowd of people and His mother and brothers couldn't get through to see Him, He didn't say, "Excuse Me, folks, but I've got to go and say 'Hi' to My family." He asked, "Who is My family? Who are My brothers and My mother?" (Matthew 12:48). If people would care to read up on the recorded Words and opinions of the Man they claim to "follow," they'd find out that He didn't have a lot of positive things to say about His own nation's leaders - religious or political - either. In contrast to that, most Christians nowadays would blindly follow "their" President into WWIII and to the annihilation of every living thing, just because he happens to be the leader of the country they happen to have been born in, even if he were the Devil himself, as long as he keeps claiming, "Yeah, I'm a Christian."

Only faintly, like an echo from a different world, rings Jesus' admonition in most believers' ears, "By their fruits ye shall know them." All the "fruit" and evidence necessary to convince most folks these days is that their candidate holds a passport of their same nationality and that they have the right flag waving behind them. "Everyone else is guilty," as far as they're concerned and is thus deprived of even the most basic human rights. I'm not writing this because I want to be nitpicking or a pain in anyone's butt. But I believe the time will come when those that are sowing the wind right now will reap a whirlwind of proportions that will make Katrina look cute by comparison, and I'm sure there will be a lot of folks then who'll have the nerve to ask, "But why? What did we do to deserve this?" Well, for one thing, you didn't care very much about the truth. That's why you swallowed innumerable lies from your leaders & still said, "Yeah, that's okay, after all, he's ours." Even when those leaders sent your sons off to unjust wars to violate every commandment of God ever gave you. Just going to church was supposed to make up for it all. But I'm sorry, I can't find that anywhere in the Bible. In fact, the only thing I find on that subject is that God doesn't live in any type of temple, church or building, at all, not even if it's "your" church (Acts 7:48,49)! When it all comes down to it and you'll have to stand before Him, what will count won't be whether you were a Southern Baptist from Ohio or a Catholic from Naples, but only how you treated the "least of His brothers" (Matthew 25:40). Let's all hope that we had what it took to discern who it is that He considers "His brothers" and that we then had the heart to be nice to the least and the lowest of them... Even if they weren't a member of "our" club. Some folks might argue, But its natural to stick to ones own kind. Sure, animals do it, too. But perhaps in this case Jesus gave us a sample of how to do things in a super-natural way, one different from the norm or natural. (Didnt Paul also say, The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God? 1Cor.2:14) Jesus was a Jew in His mid-thirties when He gave us a living example of extraordinary acceptance of non-Jews and other age-groups than His own. He healed and ministered to Romans and Samaritans, both generally rejected by Jews of His day, and He reprimanded His disciples for refusing children to come to Him, and He showed equal favour to the elderly. If we claim to be His disciples, why dont we start walking in His footsteps for once?

The Year of the Dead

Some self-proclaimed "debunkers of Christendom" letting themselves loose on the web with their 5-minute renditions on Youtube, supposedly "debunking" Christian classics such as C.S.Lewis' "Mere Christianity," while drooling their wisdom into their web cams, are having a hard time with the lack of "rationality" contained in some of the stuff I'm putting out. No wonder. Faith is something you just can't fit into the box of rational reasoning. On the other hand, if you truly reason properly, you'll inevitably wind up with faith. I admit, at first glance the whole idea of Christianity may seem like a major cop-out. All the professional "debunker" sees is a bunch of lunatics who've cooked up this "God-idea," and to top it off, they come up with the ultimate superhero to save them from the one thing everyone is most scared of, since it's the one thing they can't possibly avoid: kicking the bucket. Well, it didn't work that way with me. My conversion was much more of a big surprise - both for myself, and my atheist friends who never forgave me - than the result of a search for an emergency exit or way around that one fateful event at the end of our road. To this very day, death doesn't represent a threat to me or anything I'd dread necessarily. Maybe I've seen too much misery. And I'm not the only one. Friends, acquaintances & relatives around us are dying away like flies, as if they all got tired of the charade presented to them daily on the silver platter of "reality," brought to you by the corporate media machinery. The proof of God's existence stamped all over His creation is too overwhelming for anyone to ignore but idiots, we've covered that. But IF there is a God, then it stands to reason that this present life isn't the best He could possibly come up with. And if one bothers to look up what the greatest known and most widely recognized authority on God's views and views has to say on the matter, they will find confirmation there. All the great heroes of faith, the Good Book claims, were in it for something better than this mess - and it's doubtful that theirs was as big as ours. So what was good for them, certainly will do for me - even though our generation must admittedly be the most spoiled of all times. No one's ever had is as easy as we do - we, the ones in the winner's hemisphere of the New World Order, that is, & yet never have we felt so miserable at the same time.

"Blessed are the dead," the Bible says at one point. And all the faithful say, "Amen." No, escaping death is definitely no incentive to embrace all that defies our debunkers' rationale and become a Christian.

Helping the Blind to See

8/18/08 Jesus called the Scribes & Pharisees "blind guides of the blind," and I've covered that subject aplenty. But what exactly was it that they were blind to? What is it that they couldn't see, that others, more healthy personalities can see? You say, "The truth." Yes, but what particular aspect of it? What exactly was it that made them so mad about Jesus that it made them want to kill Him? The shocking truth - as far as I'm concerned - has been the latest revelation that set me off on a journey comparable to Amundsen's trip to the pole, although it will not only take us into the distant past, but right to the core of probably the greatest spiritual and social disease of all times, and especially of our times. What is the one thing nobody wants to see, nobody wants to be confronted with, nobody wants to be made aware of, and yet, if we only would, it would make all the difference in the world? What is it we dread so much that we don't ever talk about, and not even think about because it depresses us more than our favorite football team losing a game? Our mistakes. We're scared to death of making them, causing some people to be so spiritually paralyzed that they practically don't do anything - anything that would ever make a difference or would pose a risk, that is. And if we were bold enough to make them, then we're usually way too scared to talk about them openly, and we even hate to admit them to ourselves and rather flush down the whole issue with a six-pack or distract ourselves in whichever possible way. We do a lot of good works to make up and cover up for them, so that we can pat ourselves on the back again,

creating a huge and solid carpet to hide those most hideous and dreadful of all existing things from our sight, and anyone else's. Of course, the only One we can't hide them from is God, and I suppose that's why they hated Jesus. He just knew all about'em and was looking right through them. I'm the type of guy who has made more mistakes in his life than there are hairs on the body of a fully grown gorilla, and yet when confronting myself with the question, "Can you name one mistake you ever made?" I had to recruit the help of my journal. I was actually going to ask someone else that question but then realized I'd first have to see how well I'd be able to answer it myself. And it was harder than I thought, even with the amount of mistakes I undoubtedly made, which is probably way above average, but I couldn't pinpoint them all that easily, and not without the help from hundreds of pages of written conversations with my Maker... (And I'm only half-way through with that project, since the word "mistake" seems to be one of the most frequent). Of course, there are the crass and obvious ones we don't ever forget, like when we overlook a stop light and cause an accident. That sticks. And those are easy to remember. After all, that was an innocent little blunder that can happen to anyone, even though the consequences were tough to deal with. You had to do without your car for a few days while it was in the repair shop, and your insurance rate went up. But most of our mistakes we make are innumerable small ones that add up and suddenly emerge from the ground under which they were hidden and show their ugly collective face in form of a divorce or some other disaster that happened in our life without our ever being able to explain how they came about. Somebody once said, "You can never be too bad for Jesus, only too good." How true. Only folks who are aware of the fact that they're making mistakes aplenty need help, let alone a Savior, whereas those who are oblivious to the remote possibility that they might even be capable of any such thing as making a mistake, they're so good, they're better off without One. Because all He'll ever do is remind them of the one fact that they simply refuse to see: that beneath that thin veneer of goodness and self-righteousness lies the same kind of sinful heart that beats in all of our chests. It's just that sin manifests itself differently with each type of personality. And the obvious ones are much easier to deal with and overcome than the well-hidden ones. So, needless to say, mistakes are a whole new territory to explore in itself. Especially our own mistakes, that is, along with the hidden fears that prevent us from ever admitting to them, being able to see and recognize them, and thus learning from them faster than we could from any other source of information or tutorship. In fact, that is most likely what this whole life is all about, in fact, all of world history, which once it will be over with, I'm sure we'll all refer to as The Big Picture, Volume 1. We're being given the golden opportunity to make countless mistakes in this life, the first one being the famous one committed by Adam & Eve. Even in the perfect environment with perfect circumstances, they weren't perfectly happy, or at least not enough to resist one silly temptation.

I daresay that we're probably presented with equally significant temptations on a daily basis, only that we cave in to them so easily that we don't even notice it anymore. Just in case any of us thought they were better than Adam & Eve. We're supposed to have gotten smarter than they were, but did we? I doubt it. One huge requirement would be learning from our mistakes, the way I'm sure they did. The drastic repercussions made it so obvious they'd blown it. In our world, the changes are happening a little more slowly. What was once still pretty close to paradise is turning into hell so smoothly that we hardly notice it, and by the time Satan will have assumed his throne and rulership over this planet for good, most people will probably have gotten used to it. We're becoming so used to ignoring mistakes being made and any type of evil, most of us won't even recognize it when the personification of evil (including self-righteousness, I'm sure) himself will stare us in the face from our TV screens. Well, we'll have a long time to learn from and teach our children about the mistakes we made, after that episode will be over, and we'll see whether anyone will have learned anything out of it sooner or later. As for me, I'm starting right now, and keeping my eyes open for any precious lessons to be gained out of my nearly-constant blowing it, and I can recommend it as the No.1 therapy for keeping your feet on the ground and learning to deal with life as it really is. It's exciting and not nearly as terrible at all as we always thought it would be. In fact, our mistakes are something we should thank God for. They're probably the main purpose we're here in the first place.

Apocalypse Now?
8/18/08

Not many of us have the guts to see things the way they really are. Not many folks in the world are brave enough to really call a spade a spade. Thus, not many people are aware of the amount of darkness that surrounds us, and of the flood of lies the world is drowning in. I thought I was in the "truth" business for decades, but I'm only beginning to learn the ropes now, of how rare, and thus, how valuable, the truth really is. Nearly on a daily basis I discover more areas of every day life that the public - all of us - are being (and have been for decades) told lies about. It seems as if every single "War on something" the U.S. government ever concocted was and has been the exact opposite of what it professes to be, just like the Federal reserve Bank is just the exact opposite of "federal" and "reserve." The more blatant the lie, the more effective it is.

The "War on Terror," or course, as at least some people seem to begin to realize, is nothing but a war OF terror, perpetrated against the peoples of this world in order to usher in Big Brother's New World Order, giving him full power to spy on your every move, and in the process get rid of some ethnic and religious impurities in the perfect society of tomorrow, thus helping to reach the desired goal of diminishing the world population. The "War on drugs," I'm sure, is just another farce and big cover up of the war OF drugs destined to reach those same goals, or at least, if nothing else, help further the desired goal of diminishing the world population - oh, and of course, - as applies to all "war on somethings," rake in some extra cash to ensure that they, the rulers of today, will also remain the rulers of tomorrow. Money rules. One other "war" the "War on..." morons have cooked up decades ago and I'm only now beginning to be made aware of, is the so-called "war on cancer." And if one is to believe half of what this man, Dr. Leonard Horowitz, has to say in his enlightening documentary, then it is no exception, and just another big means to reach the same NWO goals, and has been, in effect, no more than another war on the peoples of this world. Probably tomorrow's news will flash the new slogan "War on hunger" in your face, and you'll know what that will mean. It will mean, "We have rigged up everything according to our magnificent ways in such a manner, that soon you and your families won't have anything left to eat. So, starve, you bastards." Again, I apologize for my detrimental lack of political correctness, but I always tend to get a little beside myself when confronted with the aspect of unprecedented dimensions of genocide. Of course it doesn't exactly help that the supposedly "enlightened" people of the world, those who profess to have found the Way, the Truth and the Life and the Light of this world in Jesus Christ only add to the confusion by proclaiming that the wonderful system they're living in is actually not darkness, but light, that there are actually no lies being told, but that the government is telling the truth (cough, choke!). Recently we saw the 70s movie "A Hiding Place" about the Dutch Ten Boom family, hiding Jewish refugees in their house during WW2 and paying dearly for it with their freedom (and some family members with their lives.) Their own pastor was repeating the same old humdrum of "The Bible says to obey the government." But old Papa Ten Boom wisely answered, "There comes a time when we must decide to obey God, rather than men." How true, because that is even brought out repeatedly and more explicitly in the Bible than the one place where Paul says we're to submit to the powers that be. And even though we're supposed to submit and not cause a physical, violent rebellion, that doesn't mean we're supposed to swallow everything they say. Especially in the light of the fact that governments have been notorious for doing nothing but lie in order to keep the powers that be in power.

So, by nodding their consent to a corrupt and downright wicked government's activities, those so-called Christians, the false church and Laodecian Whore of the Apocalypse, becomes just as guilty as the very perpetrators of evil, because they contribute heavily to keeping the vast majority deluded. They say, "There IS no darkness, folks! What are you getting so uptight about?" The only "darkness" their sheep are supposed to accept and see is that of the officially condoned political enemies of the state, falling into the categories mentioned above, of "ethnic and religious impurities in the perfect society of tomorrow." Former Illuminati member of the high ranking council of 13, John Todd, already stated in the 70s that churches (i.e. their pastors) were being bribed massively. I suppose one day we'll know the amount of the billions that must have exchanged hands in order for preachers to deceive millions of Christians into believing that slaughtering Muslims is actually a "Christian" thing to do... That's what I like about lone voices of truth in the wilderness like Lawrence M. Vance. He calls a spade a spade. He calls the darkness darkness, and the totally un-Christian habit of slaughtering innocent people of different beliefs just that. - Especially when it turns out that the real motives behind the slaughter were multi-billion dollar oil deals, pipelines, and of course, the usual NWO agenda of diminishing the world population. I used to get physically sick when I read the Book of Revelation, kind of like Neo when he found out what the Matrix was. Coming to grips with the reality of the Matrix of lies we're living in right now, is pretty sickening, too, if you have the guts to believe it. It's almost as if the Apocalypse were upon us.

Doctors of Doom

8/21/08
Are prophets of doom all long-haired weirdoes like me, who play guitar and post wild and controversial blogs? "You bet," you say.

Well, you lose that one, I say. I just read the third article within a few short weeks about a serious, sophisticated, cream of the crop, well-to-do and respected economic advisor predicting some big, heavy sh... I mean crisis, happening as early as later on this year: "Former IMF chief economist Kenneth Rogoff said on Tuesday," (that's 2 days ago) that "The worst of the global financial crisis is yet to come and a large U.S. bank will fail in the next few months as the world's biggest economy hits further troubles." The second article was "Dr. Doom" about economics professor at New York University Nouriel Roubini who warned the IMF back in 2006 of the financial dilemma the US and it's pitiful allies are currently finding themselves in. People laughed at him back then. They're not laughing anymore. Then there was the "global stock and credit crash alert" issued by the Royal Bank of Scotland (allegedly a Rothschild Bank?) in June... Well, it's easy to "forecast your devices" (see Daniel 11:24, 25, KJV) when you're the one devising them... Anyway, folks, I thought I'd just let you know that I'm not the only loony saying that there's something tough & ugly comin' 'round the bend, and maybe sooner than you'd like it, so we'd all better pull up our pants & be as prepared as we can for what's comin'... And Lord have mercy 'pon our souls. Of course, I'll be just as happy as anyone of this turns out to be just another false alarm. But it won't hurt to have a few extra cans of Grandma's Homemade Chicken Stew tucked away in your basement, just in case you'll truly find the supermarket on the corner - along with your bank and virtually everything else "closed until further notice."

By Their Fruits (and Veggies) You Will Know Them

8/22/08 One of the pre-eminent ways which shows to what extent the Devil has turned this world upside down, and our twisted perception of things, is that the majority of people actually believe that just because mankind was allowed to have some technological breakthroughs over the past few centuries, that they have "evolved" and developed into something better than their forefathers.

Of course, it's easy to believe that if you've been brainwashed to believe that your forefathers resembled gorillas. If you have a look at the biblical portrait of our forefathers, however, you'll find - among the many mistakes we all make - more nobility, character and true values there than in any society or nation presently on earth. Even if our knowledge may have increased, it is what you do with that knowledge what matters, and if "by their fruits ye shall know them," then for all the misery and pain our knowledge has resulted in, I wonder if we're truly better off than our predecessors, or if perhaps in some aspects, "ignorance is bliss" after all. A good illustration of this is our modern fruits and vegetables: They may look good on the outside, artificially beefed up and genetically enhanced to look like their plastic counterparts in furniture stores, but did you know that our modern, "evolved" fruits and vegetables have actually lost some of their original nutrition value? When it comes to nutrients, minerals, vitamins and all those things that really count, more than mere looks, our modern and technologically enhanced produce doesn't cut the cake. How true that is of people. You can buy yourself a new nose, a whole new face, or a different color of skin, a whole new set of teeth, have the fat in your butts sucked off and re-injected into your lips, so that even a 75-year old can still resemble a flawless Barbie, but you cannot possibly inject real happiness (or moral values) into their souls. The glimpse into the mirror that thankfully lies at you and hides your true age may give you a temporary shot of satisfaction, compared to a shot of whisky or heroin, but you can't buy true happiness with lies. True, our forefathers may have looked not quite as glamorous, and neither did their veggies and fruits, and they may have had to do a lot of manual work and not have been able to enjoy the crowning achievement of technological evolution in fingering a remote control, but I defy anyone who tries to tell me that we are happier today than they were. And our modern, "evolved" suicide rates prove it. Let's face it: life sucks when you constantly kid yourself into thinking that you're the cream of the crop, when in reality you can't even hold a candle to one single, honest, hard-working 19th century coal miner, much less one of the Early Christians who suffered severe persecution for the first 3 centuries of Christendom, or some of the earlier patriarchs. The only human quality that has truly evolved into unprecedented proportions is pride, which has been inflated just like our modern paper currencies. Coming to think of it: this whole System is just one huge, colorful, pretty-on-the-outside balloon with nothing on the inside but hot air, and utterly unprepared for its first rendezvous with a sharp rock...

Freedom's Just Another Word for...

8/31/08 There's a seemingly insignificant line in an old song written by Kris Kristofferson, made popular by the Sixties Legend Janis Joplin, that has turned out to be a revelation of truth, proven time and again: "Freedom's just another word for 'nothing left to lose'" sings the chorus of "Bobby McGee." Since we get to play for a lot of well-to-do people, and sometimes for the extremely wealthy, it has been our observation that if what Kristofferson wrote there is true, that the free people must live somewhere else. Last night we observed another confirmation of Bobby McGee's profound truth, as we played in the luxurious home of a prestigious artist, towering over a spectacular view of the probably most beautiful part of the lake of Constance with a garage full of century old cars, each of which worth a multiple sum of all our meager possessions put together. It's funny, though, that once you get to know enough of this sort of extravaganza, it pitifully ceases and fails to impress at some point, especially when it becomes apparent that the essence of what really constitutes a rich and fulfilled life is missing from the picture of such abundance. Most rich people we've had the pleasure to play for so far, usually made an effort to at least try to create an air of equality between themselves and their staff, or any other human beings from strata of society less materially blessed, but that effort was being purposely avoided in this situation, apparently with the intention to impress the laden guests all the more, which gave the unbiased observer the slight impression that perhaps slavery has not been abolished yet down here in the south of Germany. It gets one thinking. Where is the point where people start building walls of separation between themselves and other humans that set them apart from them, as something - exclusively in their own minds - "better" than their fellowman? What is the sum that one needs to own that entitles them to the claim of being on a higher level than those other, "mere mortals?" - Because it's obvious that such semi-gods deem themselves immortal, or at least they behave in such a way

that they would never expect having to stand before their Creator at any point, Who, as it is written, is no respecter of persons, and does not have any preferences based on material criteria. Maybe "the love of money is the root of all evil" because it's the primary building material for the pride of life that erects those walls around us. After all, it's usually rich people who send their subjects off to kill their fellowman in other countries, and - as it usually turns out - not at all for the noble reasons they claimed their war was necessary for... It's not that it's wrong or a sin to be rich, but what matters is what your money makes you become, and whether one has the maturity to keep in mind that no amount of possessions will make a difference between themselves and others that will last. Obviously, it takes some folks less to get to the point where they think themselves better than others and separate themselves from "the rest of the mob," or elevate themselves to some self-erected mental shrine of some sacred state above the crowd, and I find it helpful to regularly remind myself of Kris Kristofferson's little piece of wisdom and ask myself, how free am I today? What have I got to lose today? There's an old German fairy-tale called "Hans im Glueck" (roughly translated "Lucky Jack" or "Hans in Luck"), about a boy who finds out that the more he possesses, the more miserable he becomes, and that the way to happiness is giving it all away. Of course, like most people, I detested that story as a kid. Before I learned the lesson from "Bobby McGee," that is, which happened rather recently. Jesus put it like this: "A man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth." Or in modern English: "Your life does not consist of the bunch of things you own." In fact, a life that consists exclusively of the value of the material things one possesses always turns out to be an empty life, an "empty shell, groomed and fed so well..." One would think that we, the enlightened society of the 21st century would have grasped such basics of life by now, but since that's obviously not the case, I'm afraid it only proves just how enlightened we really are... "What would it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his own soul?" Jesus asked 2000 years ago. The answer is, obviously: nothing. The same amount that would have ensured your happiness during your life-time. So, it all comes back around to nothing. The only difference is whether you'll fall for the illusion of "something" or even "a whole lot," or not.

All That Glitters Is Not Gold

9/9/08 Can you blame anyone for refusing to subscribe to Christianity these days? With some of the biggest culprits & perpetrators of evil posing as Christians, including some of the greatest dorks this world has ever seen running entire superpowers, and the majority of believers falling for their scheme & voting for them... I can't. On the other hand, what are you really buying into when you join an average Christian church, these days? Does it even remotely resemble the life-style of Christendom's Founder and His original followers, or is it just some artificial mock-up of the real thing, just as you get a made-inAmerica mock-up of nearly everything else on the planet? No, I'm not blasting Christianity, I'm just trying to make you aware that there is a counterfeit version of the Real Thing around that everyone's buying into, that's poisonous. Not all that glitters is gold. I've written before about how I perceive some outstanding Muslims or Hindus to have been greater saints or even better "Christians" than the majority of their officially pious & crossflaunting counterparts, but I'm coming across more and more situations in real life that seem to confirm my theory that God doesn't judge you by your tag. Of course, we Christians have the excuse that the Devil's on our trail and works a lot harder at stopping us from being good than perhaps the average Joe who has no reputation or standard to defend. But then it seems like an awful lot of us Christian soldiers aren't very much of a bunch of fighters. We have big mouths & think we're the greatest, sort of like the U.S. Army in little tiny 3rd World countries. But when it comes to really fighting a real foe we turn chicken & run, deserting our friends who bought into our "We'll defend you from the bad guys" lines, when all we were interested in was their resources & 30 pieces of silver. No wonder the Chinese are laughing at the elections in America, just as they're probably laughing at the Western plastic version of Christianity. They've seen real Christians refusing to deny their faith for decades in their own prisons, and they can tell the difference between real fighters and a bunch of big-mouthed pussies (in the sense of little kittens - no offense!)...

As long as Christians in the world are at large more selfish and materialistic than their Hindu counterparts, more idolatrous in the worship of the things made or bought by their own hands than any Muslim, and greater opponents and obstacles to peace than the Buddhist population of the world, faith in Christ will never be an attractive alternative to members of other religions. As long as Christians, in their actions are living a lie that brings death to the world, we'll have a hard time convincing them that Jesus is indeed the "Way, the truth and the life."

Flatlander's Folly

Sept.30, 2008

In his article "A Nation of Flatlanders," Newsweek's Michael Hirsh correctly addresses a condition, which, I'm afraid, has been ailing his country for a little while longer than since the Bush administration. While I thoroughly enjoyed the article (- myself having been aware of the "Flatland" concept since I was a wee lad of 13 - thanks to a spin-off on Edwin Abbot's "Romance of Many Dimensions" published in the 70s by David Berg -) to merely call the current hoodlum in Iraq someone's "folly," in my opinion is as blatantly failing to do the subject justice, as would be calling the Holocaust a "mishap" or "Hitler's blunder," and such a statement could only come from an American (who values foreign lives infinitely less than their fellow patriots'), and from someone who, although addressing a problem or spiritual disease, is himself currently a victim of the same, howbeit one of the exceptional kind who at least recognize the problem. Last night we saw Peter Berg's "The Kingdom," probably one of the best portrayals ever, of the deeply rooted hatred between Americans and Muslims, and from the rational, "Flatlander's" point of view, one would reach the conclusion that religion is probably the most idiotic thing there is (right next to patriotism, but that's not the message the movie makers wanted to bring across). Only someone looking a little deeper, beyond the limits of their own finite dimensions of what is to be believed and accepted as "real" or not, can see the hands in the dark pulling the threads of manipulation, playing one party skillfully against another, creating what the Germans call a "Feindbild," an artificial image of your enemy in your mind, and in this case, achieving that the majority of rational people in the world will believe exactly that: Religion is the Enemy.

While the two opposing (artificially created) forces of communism and capitalism were ensuring the necessary tension and strife to cater to the unseen manipulators' agenda for half a century, the new culprit is religion, the last enemy to be overcome in order to achieve world peace within the glorious New World Order. Without being aware of a plan that's unfolding in world history and recognizing that the "New World Order" was more than just a neat line Bush Sr. came up with (- probably long before Mr. Hirsh had his job with Newsweek -), what Bush Jr. and his potential successor are committing is merely a "folly." In my opinion, it is a much larger folly to be as naive to assume such a thing. It isn't just folly or plain stupidity to be pouring billions into a sinking ship called "The Economy," deemed "unsinkable" for decades, (despite the repetitive outcries of the prophets of doom since the 70s), because just like the future abolition of religion, Mr. Hirsh, it is the New World Order's cleverly devised plan and intention - not merely some poor dupe's "folly" - to abolish the other thing, even more important to (most) people than their religion: Cash! The architects of the New World Order know that the only way the masses are going to relinquish their beloved churches (temples, Mosques, etc.) and paper money, is by proving to the entire world that both only create problems, and are a nuisance - a relic of the past, soon to be abolished. Of course, they'll have a neat alternative handy and ready for each man, woman and child: a personal chip just for your right hand or forehead, as prophesied 2000 years ago, to get you what you want at the mall, plus, a tailor-made new world ideology to replace all pestering religions, including its own messiah, mahdi, savior or superman... whatever you wish to call him. It's understood that no one voluntarily wants to face such a bleak outlook, if that's supposed to be the "guiding force" behind history and the glorious "extra-height" (as Abbot put it), or additional dimension, if that's all there is to it. The good news is that above and around the matrix of evil, there's yet another layer of truly divine and - for a change - benign purpose for mankind, and that's God's plan, "Matrix" or Kingdom, whatever you want to call it, which engulfs and only uses all lesser dimensions within it to teach the universe a lasting lesson with a happy ending. You may be abolish religion, and with most of it, you'd probably be doing the world a favor. But you can't abolish God. And there IS One, you can bet your cash on it!

Wine of Fornication

Oct.9, 2008

Having been to the U.S. changed my life forever, because it was the first step I took toward the full realization that the only place that the "Great Country" as which the United States of America is always depicted actually exists, is in its movies. Of course, most people don't experience the same I did when they travel there, possibly because their brainwashing started earlier than mine. Trying to figure out to which circumstance I can ascribe my ability to discern something real from a fake (- apart from some supernatural gift the Bible calls discernment -) I can only come up with the fact that my parents didn't allow a TV in our house until I was around six years old. And even then I wasn't allowed to watch everything. I ascribe to this circumstance - and I wouldn't call it lucky as much as the direct miraculous intervention of God - that I am one of the apparently rare breed of humans who are still able to distinguish whether what any high-ranking politician is saying actually makes any sense or not. Most people - my guesstimate, probably more than 99.5% of the Western population - hear a speech, say, by the President of the United States, and they automatically figure that because he is the leader of the great Nation that is home to Hollywood, it must make some sense somehow, and there must be goodness and truth in it. They need no further verification. Their inner "bullshit" detector - originally installed in humans by their Maker in ancient times, also referred to as "common sense," is left dysfunctional and obsolete, of course, driving the 0.5% of the population whose sense for right and wrong is still intact to the edge of insanity every time the President opens his mouth and his audience responds by applause, instead of doing what would be the appropriate reaction, namely to tar and feather or strangle him. My personal guess is that this worldwide immunization to total nonsense by nearly non-stop exposure to Corporate propaganda both via the media, press and public school curricula is what

the Book of Revelation is referring to as "the wine of the wrath of her fornication" by which the mysterious Whore "Babylon" has made drunk the nations of the earth. This may sound like total lunacy to you, but I'm convinced it will be taught as fact in your grand-children's history books. Now, 7 years after 9/11 you wouldn't get me back to that country except by abduction. "1984" has become reality 24 years behind schedule, but everybody is so perfectly brainwashed, they perceive it as perfectly normal, probably the same way German citizens 70 years ago used to think it was normal for undesirable elements of their society to be shipped off to special camps... Lets analyze a little bit that strange concoction termed in the Bible, The wine of the wrath of her fornication. Some still contend that the description of Babylon fits the Roman Catholic Church, but Ive already disputed the notion that there would be any such weapon in the hands of the Catholic Church that would exert such power of all nations. If anything, - having been raised a catholic the power of the church always struck me as something extremely sobering, not at all intoxicating. Whereas there isnt a nation on earth that hasnt tasted from the wine of entertainment running from the presses of the U.S. movie industry, not a single country whose population wouldnt at least in part be high on that rush of reality-altering intoxication, the gas of the benefits of capitalism, silently and voluntarily unleashed upon each family by themselves via their satellite dishes and TV sets. Whats wrong with a little bit of entertainment? Nothing, if all it wants to do is entertain us and distract us from our usually quite different reality a little bit, and get us away from thinking. Its another story, though, if were lured into a different kind of thinking altogether, and being manipulated so well act in a certain way that will cater to the goals of a certain powerful group of people. Lets have a look at the stuff theyre pushing on our bewildered, passive brains: 1. First of all: Money Rules! Happiness equals money. Youre a winner if youve got it, youre a loser if you dont. In stark contrast to what Jesus had to say about the issue 2. Fun rules. Even if you dont have loads of money, it is still your right to have fun, and to get it whichever way. After all: youre all just mutated little monkeys, right? So what other purpose could there be in life other than that? 3. Youth rules. Adults are ogres, kids are innocent, charming little princes and princesses, and if you want to avoid being labeled a total a..h..e, youd better spend the rest of your life bending over backwards to cater to every single wish of your little ones. (After all, its your own fault if you were dumb enough to have any in the first place) 4. Truth rules NOT! Its perfectly legitimate to lie and deceive in order to get what you want. Thats what their god has been doing from the beginning and what hes best at, so how could his gospel ever preach anything else?

5. Thou shalt kill! If you want to solve problems, a gun is the best and quickest way to do it. Whether its your girl cheating on you, or the stupid Christian kids in your school, the best thing you can do for the New World Order is steal your papas gun, mow them all down, so that we can finally convince the rest of the world how dangerous it is to have people able to defend themselves & alter gun laws to take them all away from you. (Following the old scheme of first tempting to commit evil in order to accuse afterwards.) 6. America rules! It is beyond a shadow of a doubt that America is the greatest country ever* to have existed on the face of the earth, and any creature daring to insinuate otherwise is a terrorist and ought to be tortured to death. 7. Oh yeah, did we mention it? Torture is legitimate! After all, you want to extract the necessary information from the evildoers so that we can eliminate them and liberate the rest of the world, ummm from their evil ways, of course, hehe. 8. Discipline and order suck! If you dont want to be an absolute moron, hated and spitted upon by the rest of the world, then for Chs sakes, leave the rest of the world be and do whatever they damn please to (except for them America-hating terrorists, of course), but especially them young ones. After all, all they want is have a little fun, and remember rule no.2: there is no other purpose in life. 9. Jesus Christ is a bad word. You utter it whenever something dreadfully bad happens, youre terribly upset, or you want to kill someone. 10. Anyone who adheres to these moral codes and swallows this stuff is good, anyone who wont isnt and will wind up on the blacklist of all the superheroes in the world combined: Spiderman, Batman, the Incredible Hulk, Superman, George Bush theyre all gonna come and get ya, and you gonna wish you hadnt a messed wit dem! How do I know all these things? Simple. Ive watched enough movies. These, of course are only the top ten of hundreds of rules you learn to keep if you keep swallowing the wine of wrath & (Cali)fornication (as some have termed it). The attractive thing about them is that theyre not just some somber, stiff rules that make you go through life all dry and sober like a piece of sackcloth, but drunk as a skunk. The only disadvantage is the hangover the next morning, and the crude awakening to the dude waving the bill under your nose, demanding you pay the fiddler.

* (Which may have even been true, before its inhabitants allowed corrupt leaders and national pride to cheat them out of their integrity)

God in a Box

0ct.24, 2008

People often interpret the term "all-powerful" to indicate that God does it all: everything is predestined; He created the Devil to be bad, and predestined Judas to betray Him, and everything is pre-programmed, anyway, so what difference does it make, anyway, what choices I'm going to make today? That's why we put the blame for practically anything that goes wrong on God. We hiss a sarcastic "thanks a lot!" in His direction when something doesn't go our way, because we figure He did it to tease us. After all, He's all-powerful, so He does it all, or doesn't He? No, He does not. Just because Jesus knew that Judas was going to betray Him, doesn't mean He made him do it. The same applies to the fall of Satan, or the Fall of Man with Adam & Eve. He didn't make'em do it. Nor does He make any of us do the stupid things we do, nor is He the one causing all our troubles. As James put it in his epistle: "Let no man say when he is tempted, 'I am tempted by God.' Because God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He tempt anyone." (James 1:13). Everybody has their own specific job in the Big Picture, and the Devil has chosen (God didn't make him do it) to take on the role of the tempter. That's his job (with the help of his cohorts, that is, both flesh & blood and spiritual). It's our Savior's job to save us out of the mess we allow ourselves to get into when we fall for the Enemy of our soul's temptations by choosing to say "yes" to them, instead of no, like a foolish kid who simply doesn't have the strength of character to refuse his first cigarette or drug. (Been there! - Repeatedly!) On one hand we refuse to give credit to our Maker for all the good things He does; we even refuse to give Him credit for His very creation, preferring to believe the total nonsense that it has somehow come about by itself. On the other, we blame everything bad that ever happened on Him: "How could He allow that?" Well, allowing things to happen is what free choice is all about, but it still isn't the same as making them happen, or making us do it.

We have to realize that God is the good Guy, waiting there at the other end of the tunnel to take us Home again, the One Who sent His Son to become like us in order to save us, because He loves us. That means, He's our Friend, not our Enemy. Even people who believe in Him since decades can get upset at God and blame everything that goes wrong on Him (I know what I'm talking about). It's because we swallow the deception of His enemy, which is very clever indeed: Satan projects his own profile and personality on God, so that what we see or imagine when we think of God is actually the tyrant, the big head honcho who wants to run the whole show and accuse and condemn us as soon as we make a mistake. But that's not Who God is. God prefers to remain in the background, He doesn't run the whole show the way His opponent is getting ready to do, with all his pompous ado. Look at Jesus, His Son: He wasn't a super star, no big politician or even a religious head honcho. According to His own words, He didn't even have a bed. He was a lowly and humble carpenter's son, and for 3 years He pursued a public ministry of healing and teaching, never once seeking fame in any of what He did, never trying to be the "cool guy," just doing what needed to be done, saying what needed to be said, and then getting out of the way to let His followers pick up where He left of. He even promised them, "You will do greater things than I did!" So, next time we tend to get upset with God (and I'm preaching to myself here, more than anyone else), let's try to remember Who and what God really is. He's not the bad guy that the Devil is trying to make Him out to be. He's the good Guy Who's going to save us out of this mess. Alright then, sometimes we think He could or ought to be doing that a little sooner than He actually does, and we get impatient with Him for not saving us immediately at the onset of the slightest pain or trial. But maybe it's because we haven't called Him for help yet. After all, we're trying to do everything else in our own strength, so that we can pat ourselves on the back for the hard workers we are, so why should He barge in on us unsolicited? Or do you know anybody who is actually trusting in God for their daily bread, instead of their own arm of the flesh? I'm not saying those people don't exist, but they're a rare breed, and certainly not your average church attendant or preacher. God is not the liar, the thief, the culprit, nor the one trying to cheat us out of our happiness, and the sooner we realize that, the greater favor we'll be doing ourselves. Our false concept & picture of God (perhaps that's why one of His commandments was not to make an image of Him, because no matter how hard we try, it'll always fall short of the Real Thing?) is probably what makes us want to keep Him locked up in the box we have built Him for a home: the church building. Nicely and safely locked up for 6 days and 23 hours a week (with few exceptions), and only let loose upon our spirits to torment us for that one dreadful hour on Sunday mornings... Well, thankfully, that Pollyanna type of churchiantity has waned over the past decades (otherwise no one would be going to church anymore at all), but most people I know want to keep God out of their private lives, and when they want to have fun, they don't want to think about Him. "You're the bad Guy, You go back inside Your box!"

Personally, if God is Love, and love is what I happen to enjoy most, I'd like to have Him around and enjoy Him as much as possible. After all, if He's cool enough to have created all of the things & people I like best, then who knows what other fun stuff He might possibly be up to? So, I think I'm going to pull God out of my "grump corner" (I don't have a church building to stick Him in, so that had to do for now), and invite Him to tug along next time I'm going out to have some fun. Maybe I'll live to tell y'all how it went. Most people obviously think they're better off and doing just fine without Him, but I guess people's idea of fun varies a lot, and can differ as drastically as my personal music taste from my daughter's. But I'd still recommend the idea of giving God a chance to be your friend. Who knows? Maybe it'll turn out that He's the best you ever had!

What is a Prophet?

What is a prophet? A prophet usually isn't invited to hold a speech by the prestigious, nor to hold a sermon in front of your Southern Baptist congregation on Sunday morning (as much as one or the other preacher may think of himself as such). A prophet doesn't hold "improve your life" seminars or fancy workshops. A prophet is never popular. Otherwise Jesus would have lied, when He said, "The servant is not above the master. If they have hated Me, they will hate you also." A prophet is the one guy out of 400 others that you don't want to hear. There were 400 false prophets during Jeremiah's day who foretold that Jerusalem wasn't going to fall into Babylonian hands. Only Jeremiah preached otherwise, and was thrown in the dungeon. Only Jeremiah was right, though, and was pulled out on the dungeon on behalf of the conquering Babylonians. A prophet is never a pop star, and a pop star is never a prophet. A prophet doesn't reap much applause. What does applause mean, from a world that crucifies its saviors, persecutes its prophets and applauds, nay, worships people that make Nero and Caligula look like Bambi and Flower in comparison?

People don't like prophets. True prophets, that is. In fact, they hate'em. They're a thorn in their side. They're the epitome of embarrassment and worse. They're spots on the sparkling clean vesture of the Great Society, because they're pointing at the blood beneath that cloak, and forecast that society's doom. Who wants to hear about doom when we're having so much fun? Who wants to believe that the world could possibly be as bad as they say, when we've got movies that can make us laugh and cry, and we can get ice cream and custard in any possible flavor you can imagine? When there are people around as wonderful as Oprah? Who wants to hear about 10.000 starving a day, about Iraqi victims of an unjust war, aborted children, or unjustifiable justifications for torture when things are going this good? A prophet is the one guy that has the guts to say, "God damn America" while all the rednecks stop their ears and scream with all their might, "No, no, no! God BLESS America!" When that's the one thing even the Almighty simply can't do anymore. A prophet is the one who weeps while everybody else is still drunk with laughter. He sits in sackcloth and ashes while the rest of the world parties, mesmerized and totally in love with themselves. A prophet is an idolsmasher. He has the audacity to crush that picture of a fake reality, that idol, that image people worship instead of the one true God, and could never be less appreciated for his deed. He does and says what is the only right thing to do and say, even if no one wants to hear it or insists it's the wrong thing to do or say. He doesn't go by the status quo. He goes by a different standard. God's. He does so because he has the audacity to say that God still speaks today, to anyone who'll listen, young or old, because He is not a God of the dead, but of the living. A prophet is all you wouldn't want to be if your hopes, dreams, ambitions and treasures lie in this world, and something one can only even consider becoming if he sees and knows that all this world has to offer is husks and like ashes between your teeth compared to what the World of tomorrow has to offer. A prophet isn't moved by the scoffers. Trying to please them would be like betrayal and a slap in his God's face. He considers their opinions but dung that needs to go down into the ground in order to help bring about new life from the ashes of the old. While everybody else roars the national anthem of the champions, he quietly hums the tune of God. He is weird. Strange. Different. Disliked. Derided and despised. But never a coward. Let the pack of the rest of them band together against him, the wolves gnash their teeth and the howls of a million demons threaten him, he still knows that he alone with God is a majority, for "more are they that be with us than they that be with them." (2.Kings 6:16) A prophet is one who will pray for you to be able to see it (2Kings 6:17).

Sleep On

Nov.27, 2008

Probably one of my most often recited quotes is "The one thing we learn from history, is that we never learn from history." Probably because it's one of the blatant truths of our time, and has never been as obvious - to those who discern the signs of the times, that is. The rest just fall into the same old trap as usual. People who believe that the Muslims or Islam are the big culprit of our times are just as deaf, dumb and blind as those who believed Roman emperor Nero's hogwash about the Christians having put fire to Rome, or Hitler's hype against the Jews. They're going to find out the long and hard way that the true enemy wasn't the Muslims, after all, just as the Jews weren't of the Germans, nor the Christians were, of the Romans, but rather, their own stupidity and lack of discernment when it came to the degree of corruption and evil within their own leadership. One of the few Christians who didn't fall for the "Jews are evil" mantra during the 3rd Reich was Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was imprisoned for his alliance with the Resistance, and before his execution wrote in prison: "Stupidity is actually a more dangerous enemy of good than downright evil." He must have known what he was talking about. He must have seen it all around him. All those idiots falling for the lies and atrocious distortions and violations of truth and all that is right by that madman at the helm and his cronies, sort of the way a substantial part of people who maintained their ability to think clearly have been feeling about the Bush administration... And again, never has a statement been proven so obviously true as the above cited Bonhoeffer quote has, in our present times. Never before has there been as large a group of dumb people who thought themselves to be so smart. You don't have to take my word for it. Just read this article about the "smug generation" of our children - the ones who, with a little bit of bad luck, are very likely to hail the antichrist as the new "Fuehrer" of us all... But just as parents can often be totally blind to any faults and weaknesses of their own children ("My child doesn't lie, steal, cheat..." etc.), so it seems that same type of people can also be absolutely blind to their own leader's faults or crimes, the error of the ways their whole nation may be taking, and in fact, to any fault or blame on the behalf of anything that is "their own," period. There's never anything wrong with their own side, their own religion, their own opinion, always with the other. How immature. What a bunch of kids we are! How far away we've strayed from the teachings of the One we as Christians call our Leader, about loving our enemies, not rendering evil for evil, doing good to them that hate us and loving the least of His brethren... And yet, just because we have "advanced" to the pinnacle of evolution, as the remote controls and steering wheels in our hands doubtlessly prove, we think we really are smarter than any one else who ever lived before...

Since, according to the Bible, things in this present world have been promised to become worse all the time (contrary to the theory of evolution), I can hardly imagine what kind of a shock it's going to take this time around to wake people up... But then again, some people never woke up after the shock of the skeletons in the closet of the 3rd Reich being revealed, either... And the blind guides of the blind are still humming the same old tunes as ever... "Sleep on, sleep on..."

"Left," "Right," - Where Should a True Christian Stand, Politically?

Jan.9, 2009

As a Christian, (as in follower of Christ's teachings) who chooses not to ignore what my true Commander-in-Chief has to say and who won't allow any man-made, government puppet to usurp that position of leadership and sovereignty over my life, either, I cannot subscribe to the political choice of most of my supposed fellow-Christians, who presently seem to believe that problems are solved with guns and grenades, and think a weekly hour of pew-warming will do to hide the fact that the gods they're worshiping in reality are Mammon (god of wealth) and Mars (the god of war). I'm speaking of the political right, as in Bush-ites or McCainians, the kind who would love to put a bullet into the man they call the "antichrist," just because he has a different color of skin than they do, and because he doesn't bend over backwards to kiss their flag-waving and pew-warming butts as much as his predecessor did for no other reason than convenience, because he didn't want to make the same mistake his daddy made earlier by failing to please the Bible belt during a time when most of the colored U.S. population wouldn't have cared to drag themselves to a voting booth, because they rightly figured it wouldn't have much of a difference, anyhow. On the other hand, I can't subscribe to anyone advocating the mass-murder of innocent, howbeit unborn babies, nor to the notion that man is smart enough to solve his own problems without any help from God, not even if I'm as smart as Barack Obama... I won't deny that I consider Obama the lesser of two evils, but that doesn't mean I subscribe to his politics. I'm happy for the Afro-American population to have for once received a chance to be liberated from the yoke of stupid white men, but I'm afraid their relief will only be temporary. Call me a conspiracy freak, but I believe that the true powers that be (howbeit well hidden from public view by having bought the media and thus making sure they'll stay out of them) have always mastered the art of creating two opposing forces - be it fascism or communism in the thirties, or liberalism and conservatives in the nineties - that the broad masses are led to choose sides from, in order to create the illusion of democracy and freedom. In reality, G.W.Bush has only fulfilled his part in the advance of the New World Order by making the world yet sicker of his supposed type of government and religion, and prepared his country for Obama, who will take it yet another step further toward the goal of replacing religion with the NWO'S universal ideology. Those who call Obama the antichrist are the same type of wishful thinkers who believe that Jesus will whisk them into the sky before the coming leader of the New World Order ever reveals his true face. Barack Obama is a puppie compared to what the Antichrist will be, and he sure as heck won't be American, either. America is a world power in its decline that's turning out a whole lot less smart than it managed to make the rest of the world believe for some time. The Antichrist will emerge from the resurrected parts of an

empire the world presumed dead and will "liberate" the world from the show that the clowns in Washington and their stooges in Europe are putting on. So, where should a true Christian stand, politically? Left or right? Well, if you listen to what Jesus had to say, you won't really fall for that whole left-or-right charade in the first place. He made it clear that just as He wasn't from this world, so His disciples wouldn't be, either. While we're supposed to subject ourselves to the powers that be as long as they don't interfere with the commandments God gave us to keep, that doesn't mean that there will never come a time when we will have to prove that we are to obey God rather than men and show on whose side we really stand. Politicians are always bigshots and popularity hunters, and Jesus certainly wasn't a politician. While there may have been a time that a true Christian could also be a politician, if you look around, those days are pretty much over. Those in politics who call themselves Christians are like the guys who dressed up like Indians in the Boston Tea Party scam in order to get into war with England. They may even think they're doing whatever they do for a just cause, but so did the Nazis who were condemned at Nuremberg. When the people of Israel in the Old Testament were asking for a king, they weren't doing themselves a favor, and God even warned them of this. It's because people - and especially politicians, it seems - are bound to disappoint you. They simply don't have the same qualities that our Maker does. I'd vote for Him Who gave His own life for us any day before I'd put my money on any government-paid mass murderers, be their victims either innocent Iraqis or innocent unborn children.

We Haven't Even Yet Begun

One of the biggest killers of progress and moving forward is the notion to have arrived. People who think they already know don't seek any further knowledge, their hunger to learn is stifled. They stop absorbing, soaking up the new, and so they stagnate and stop growing. This applies to so many aspects of our lives: We think we've already seen it all, and so we stop looking for new things, for new possibilities. We let the TV do its job and fill our craving for new visual input, and close the door to the possibility of whole new worlds in existence that we might yet discover, would we only lay aside the remote control long enough, or the joystick or computer mouse, for that matter.

We think we've already heard it all and trust the radio and blaring noises & Satan's sirens to fill our vacuum for new audio input, and have unlearned the art of listening to our hearts and the whispers of our Maker. We think we already know it all, and trust the institutions of education and the mass media to supply us with whatever they think we ought to "know," and have perhaps come further away from true knowledge than mankind has ever been. We think we already give so much, when we will not be judged by how much we give, but by how much we still have left, and how much more we could have given. (Remember the lesson from "Schindler's List.") Indeed, our self-image is an utterly deceptive one. We say, "I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing," and know not that we are "wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked" (Rev.3:17). We behave like spiritual primadonnas and "sit like a queen," convinced that we "shall see no sorrow" (Rev.18:7). That's why Jesus said you can't fill new wine into old wine skins. Someone special once compared faith to a vacuum of the sort that a baby creates in its mouth in order to suck the milk from its mother's breast (if you take any offense in that idea, get real, dude!). So, what is it that hinders our growth? A lack of vacuum, a lack of desire, of yearning, of a need for more, new spiritual food. What's causing the lack of desire? The abundant supply of junk-food we're not only being offered, but virtually flooded with from all sides. We haven't learned the art of saying "no" to the wrong kind of voices, the wrong kind of input, the wrong kind of spiritual drugs. But before we learn that, we'll never be able to say truly "yes" to our Creator, the only One Who can truly satisfy us and fill our needs. So, next time you feel tempted to say, "I've seen it all," or "I've heard that," or "I know all that," be still and listen to the knock and the whisper at your heart, which may tell you just the opposite: "You ain't seen nuthin' yet!" We may feel pretty much defeated by the circumstances of life and surrender to our fate & say, "That's just the way it is," or we can say - as John Paul Jones is supposed to have said when it looked as if he was defeated - "We haven't even yet begun to fight." We haven't even yet begun to love, to live, to give, to see, to know... We haven't even yet begun.

The Giant Clockwork of Chronos

The New Testament teaches us that currently this world is under the rule of Satan, the "god of this world (or age)," along with his "rulers of the darkness of this world." What is it that rulers do? They determine by what laws and standards their realm will be governed. Two of those standards by which the "powers that be" have determined to rule this present world are time and money. Both will apparently come to an end, in contrast to the values that God wants to convey to those who are governed by His standards, and consider their Home His eternal Kingdom, where His rules and standards are what count. The big disadvantage - as far as we're concerned - about God's standards and values is that we can't see them nor touch them. They require faith in order to be perceived, which is one of the rules He established for the members of His club, those who want to play the game according to His rules, and on His side. Some people are simply incapable of that, or at least not willing to adhere to that rule of faith. They totally and exclusively rely on the visible and tangible stuff around them. Now it so happens that God has placed enough information in the visible things He made all around us, so that we can still perceive the fingerprints and evidence of His existence in His creation, but those who deny the existence of the invisible also refuse to acknowledge that evidence. In order to successfully convince themselves and others of their dogma of denial, they come up with concoctions of their own imagination such as the widely taught theory of Evolution, which, coincidentally, is being fed, nourished and upheld by nothing else but those same two major values that distinguish the rule and government of this present world: time and money. According to the theory of Evolution, the one factor that makes it possible for the innumerable miracles to have happened that brought forth every species from nothing via mutation is an unfathomable amount of time: "billions of years." And the one factor that makes millions, if not billions of people acknowledge that teaching as fact, is an unfathomable amount of money that flows into the science apparatus in order to create more "evidence" from virtually nothing: a jawbone here, and thighbone there, and lots of elaborate words and articles in National Geographic or Der Spiegel, along with the televised versions of the same for an increasingly

illiterate public; and a whole new reality has been created, a mental conditioning with its own set of laws of "the survival of the fittest" that has been governing most of our globe for the past century and a half, consequently showering it with unprecedented amounts of suffering and violence. The giant clockwork of Chronos is keeping the enslaved massed in check and dancing according to its tune: "Welcome to the Machine!" For those who don't feel as comfortable or at home with that construct as evidently a large part of Civilization does, there is, thankfully, an alternative. You see, time and money haven't always been the yardstick that measures everything. There was - and still is, in the presently unseen world which envelops our physical realm - a time in which people would not have to rush through their lives chasing after paper money. In fact, some people on this planet still manage to live by that time in spite of the rat race going on around them. God's time, the stuff of which Eternity is made, is a different scope than the clock-ticking pace and rhythm that the slaves of Mammon dance to. And there's that other shred of news about this whole issue: According to the Book of Revelation, the time we're currently living under is going to come to an end. Oh, and so will money, by the way, most unfortunately for some. Like all fairy-tales, illusions, or faulty operating systems, the gospel of time and money must also come to an end. Only the Real Thing is going to last.

Would You like to Receive Jesus in Your Heart?

I've been ranting and raving a lot about and against a lot of evils in this world for the past few years, and I have sort of felt that it was my God-given duty to do so, and maybe it was. But the Lord recently reminded me that when it all comes down to it, all the exposes of the Devil's workings in the world won't make as much of a difference, nor pose as much of a threat to Satan's kingdom and the establishment of his final world order as one single soul saved. We can rant and rave on and on about this scheme of the enemy to take over the world, or that one, or how he has managed to deceive this fraction of the world population with this scheme, and another with that one, but in the end, nothing is ever going to cause as much loss to his cause as the simple, childlike question, "Would you like to receive Jesus in your heart?" After all, hearing that question at the age of 13 was the miracle that changed my life, and the spark that would ignite a fire in my life that still hasn't gone out. Even more miraculous in some ways was my own answer to that question, since it didn't make any sense to that thing between my ears when I heard it. But it came from a deeper spot within me, crawling up from within the core of my heart into my mouth and inexplicably causing me to utter the word "yes" for no other reason than that's what I was meant to do. So, if you really want to help change the world for good and make a difference for the better, would you like to receive Jesus in your heart? And if you have, would you like to ask someone else that question, in fact, anyone else? Anyone you come across on the path of your journey through life? Don't be afraid to do it. Some of them - those who were meant to become God's children - will answer "yes" for no particular reason than the fact that that's what they will fell they were meant to say, often perfectly contrary to what their rational mind may tell them. Receiving Jesus is what makes the difference. Anyone receiving Jesus is what the Devil's really scared of, and if you really want to lick the old punk, that's what you've got to do: receive Jesus and help others do the same. It's a simple, childlike prayer that changed my life and that of millions of others, and it has the power to change yours, and those of the people you come across, too: Jesus, please come into my heart! Forgive me for all the wrongs I've committed. Thank You for Your sacrifice on the cross and Your gift of eternal life! Fill me with Your holy Spirit of love so that I may share Your love with others, too, in Jesus' name I pray, Amen.
Verses on Salvation: Rev.3:20, John 1:12, 3:16, Eph.2:8,9

What About Yin and Yang?

One philosophy that certainly seems to become more popular than the "We make ya dead" type of Christianity that has given the Cause of Christ a bitter by-taste ever since the crusades, and turned out specially bad latest since the Bush administration, is the Zen-Buddhist philosophy of Yin and Yang. The symbol of Yin and Yang is rapidly becoming more popular than the cross, especially among young people. After all, Buddhists aren't known for having caused a fraction of the damage "Christians" are still perpetrating worldwide every day. So, who can blame them? Who can blame them for believing that good and evil must be equally strong, and that evil must necessarily stick around forever in order to keep the "proper balance" in nature and all things? After all, it's plainly evident by looking all around us that there are 2 sides to nearly everything. There is a good and a bad side to even all apparently bad things, as well as to seemingly purely good things. Everything seems to have a shadow side to it, a dark side. Even sunshine: you get too much of it, and it can ruin crops, or your health, and cause whole lakes to evaporate... Even water, as necessary as it is to make all life possible, can also drown you and bring death. Too much air can pop the balloon or - in the form of a storm - tear down your house. Even trees can fall over and kill you... So, what's up with all that Yin and Yang, good and evil stuff, Jesus? Looks like You're pretty speechless now, huh? Could it be that we just ruined Your show and exposed Your dark little secret that evil is just as strong as You are, and that it's going to hang around forever?

Well, it may seem that way, because we've never seen anything else and never experienced anything different. But according to the Bible, there was a couple of folks who did. And coincidentally, they introduced this whole good and evil stuff. When God created Adam and Eve (a fairy tale, you say? Well, we'll see, won't we?), and the whole caboodle of creation was done, He saw that it was good! In fact, very good. Nothing evil or bad about it. Yet. But wouldn't you know it? As much as we're always craving for something new to consume and try out, even the two happiest and most perfect folks who ever lived turned out not to be perfectly happy with what they had, even though it was perfectly good. That's what advertisement will do to you. Some legged serpent came strutting along, obviously possessed by the greatest advertiser of all times, and broke the news to Eve that there was a product around that she hadn't consumed yet: the notorious fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil! The price: one tiny little disobedience, since God had made one single little rule in order to keep happiness in Eden afloat: No munching off that one tree! The reason - retrospectively - becomes obvious: If you already know good, and it's perfectly perfect and good, who the heck would want to know evil? Well, Eve did. And so we all probably would have. After all, who's ever been able to resist advertisement? It had a fairly attractive slogan, too: Promises of godhood ("Ye shall be as gods,") and cunningly effective - the spicy ingredient of suspicion by making God sound like a liar: "Hath God said...? Not really so! Ye shall not surely die!" Well, they probably wished they had, after they ate that darn piece of forbidden fruit (which by the way was NOT an apple)! But that wasn't God plan. Adam and Eve were still supposed to become Mama and Papa and Grandma and Gramps of us all. But life wasn't half the fun it used to be before the knowledge of good and evil had entered the land! The knowledge of good had perfectly sufficed, as far as happiness goes, but then, God had a little lesson to teach the universe, and it wouldn't last billions of years, either. Just roughly - 7,000. And thus were born - roughly around the same time as Cain and Abel, coincidentally - the twin bros Yin and Yang, who have been wreaking havoc around this place ever since. But - and that's where some folks are mistaken - not forever! Just as life was perfectly possible and enjoyable without evil, so it will be again, and next time without any interruptions (except for a minor hiccup a little further on in history, but that's another story)!

While the current laws of nature and the dog eat dog scenario of the "survival of the fittest" may seem to tell a different story, and even lead us to believe that man isn't much more than a slightly overly mutated animal himself, it takes a little bit of faith in a shred of information from outside the Yin and Yang matrix (namely the Word of God), to reveal to us that circumstances haven't been and won't be always the same. There have been "changes in the Matrix" before, introducing the Yin and Yang program (aka Good and Evil), after the first human couple rejected the original "All Is Good" System, bringing into our reality all the deficiencies riding along on evil's coattail, such as death, suffering, wars, etc. But God (- the Architect with better intentions than the one we know from the "Matrix" trilogy -) has promised to push the "reset" button in the near future, which will restore the original operating system, which will make evil - once again -obsolete. Because mankind will have (believe it or not!) learned its lesson from evil, which is, life's much more fun without it, and thus we will also be able to wave a cheerful farewell to the Yang Bros., and add, only faintly audible, (the same way most of us would to the former US president:) "Please don't come 'round again!"

The Genesis of Advertisement

My mind still keeps rattling on the theme of my last thoughts on the "beginnings of advertisement" that I stumbled across via Yin & Yang (even though I should actually get to work...) The first product ever advertised in history was, basically, evil.

It sort of reminds you of the scene in "Time Bandits" where the bandits arrive at the Castle of Perpetual Darkness and its evil tenant puts on this show and offers them "the most fabulous object in the world..." and they all wind up trapped in a cage hanging from the ceiling and swinging above everlasting darkness... Isn't that what advertisement is? You're being offered something you didn't know you ever needed or wanted, but advertisement paints it so pretty that you simply can't resist it. Well, that's what Satan did to Eve when he advertised the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil (adding the ingredient of evil to an already existing world in which all was good, thus creating the Yin/Yang system of duality I expounded on earlier...): nobody needed it. Nobody knew how much they were going to regret buying that crap. Nobody knew what it was supposed to be good for, but they did it anyway, just in order to have it. Sounds just like any old regular afternoon at the mall... No wonder I never liked advertisement. It has all the qualities of the first hoax in history that resulted in every catastrophe that ever happened since... Clothes. Lies. Murder... the shebang. The difference between Satan's products and God's is that God doesn't need any advertisement for His: Everybody knows you only get good stuff from Him. And best of all, it's always free, no strings attached. Nobody ever asked for a re-reimbursement for the air they just inhaled because it wasn't their favorite flavor. You get hungry and you eat the food that comes to your fridge via good ol' mother earth. (Did you ever realize that with all the fancy stuff man created, they haven't managed to successfully reproduce food synthetically, I mean, starting from scratch with no ingredients from the Maker? After all, you can't eat plastic yet, and even that is based on a natural resource...) So, next time you feel that urge to bust your credit card due to some 256 commercials you just watched while ironing your shirts: think again! Or before you allow your kids' lives to become a non-stop repetition of the darkest hour of the Garden of Eden! The Bible has something to say about greed: "Let your conversation be without covetousness and be content with such things as ye have" (Heb.13:5). If Adam and Eve had known that, they would have saved themselves - and us - millennia worth of trouble.

The secret is just being happy with what we have, instead of ever craving what the Jones' have got. Especially in the light of the fact that 10.000 people still starve each and every day because they haven't got anything, not even the barest of necessities... So much on the beginnings of consumerism. It seemed good enough at first, but the end of it was wailing and gnashing of teeth that we haven't seen and heard the end of yet... And if you really want to be happy, why not try to make somebody else happy and make a donation instead of buying yet another item you don't really need? Let's get back to the Garden!

The Last Heroes?

On our way to our gig last night we were listening to some of Don McLean's old stuff, which I had recently dug out, and I was touched by the beauty of his art of expression, and most particularly in his anti-war songs like "The Grave," or "Everybody Loves Me, Baby" etc. It made me realize how drastically things have changed since the early 70s. People just don't write lyrics like that anymore. The vast majority have come to accept war as a commodity of life to preserve the Western status quo, or the American Way of life, or whatever. Instead of rebelling against their governments' falling into nations that they have no business dropping bombs on, they accept the media hogwash and propaganda of "the enemy" and give their silent consent to the daily mass murder that's happening on behalf of their tax money. And that in spite of the lesson we ought to have learned from fairly recent history of what guilt people can collectively heap upon themselves by silently consenting to the evils committed by their governments. How many church visits will it take to clear a conscience of that burden, that's mostly not even recognized? How many donations or tithes will it take to buy forgiveness for the silent tolerance of the slaughter perpetrated in the name of us, "the people?"

The closest thing in recent times that I heard to some of the anti-war protest songs from a time when at least a substantial amount of the world population honestly admitted that war was evil and that the U.S. had no business wreaking havoc in Vietnam are songs like Pink's "Dear Mr.President," (although the song does not mention anything about American foreign policies, but only deals with domestic issues) and, of course, we've got Pearl Jam's rendition of Dylan's "Masters of War." - Oh, and perhaps some of the Dixie Chicks' Anti-Bush rantings, for which they'll always have my respect. Oh, and of course, good ol' Neil Young's "Impeach the President," bless his soul! Pretty much everyone else that I know of dances to the modern drums of war, or rather, to the tune of "let's ignore what our country is doing in other countries," unless another bunch of flagwrapped coffins arrive at home, that is. The trademark of the 21st century, thus far: the (cultural) voices of truth have become (nearly) silent. The nations cower in fear of their leaders and follow them like sheep to the slaughter of the innocents. The problem with that is the universal law of cause and effect as laid down by many spiritual teachers, including Jesus' follower St. Paul, when he said, "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." There's a cold wind blowin', and we're beginning to see the first fruits of our "harvest" in a crumbling economy and a crisis which now has officially exceeded the rank of severity of that of the Great Depression, (along with forecasts of food shortages coming upon us as early as this year, which many of us may find themselves unable to deal with). Even the young staff of the joint we played in last night acknowledged in a conversation I overheard while packing up our gear, that we're still going to chew on the repercussions of the current crisis for the next 5, 10 or 15 years, and that even though Europe hasn't seen the worst of it. Unfortunately, it will probably take more than a financial crisis for people to wake up and tell their government, "Mr. Obama, don't follow in the footsteps of your predecessor, and please, stop killing people in Pakistan or Afghanistan." Or to their most strongly supported ally, Israel, for that matter, "Please stop killing innocent Palestinian children!" Even more unfortunately, if history continues repeating itself (- and that in such a drastic manner that some people have started to doubt whether history is really real -), then this current crisis, like the one in the 30s, will only lead to more and greater war, greater need for some "culprit" to blame and make pay for the domestic dilemma, greater cries and thirst for blood, and who will be the next people that will answer with a shattering unanimous, roaring "YES!" to the question, "Do you want total war?" Younger people nowadays speak critically of the hippie movement. But you've got to give the hippies credit for having had the guts to stand up for their love for peace, for being willing to acknowledge (unlike many supposed "Christians") the Biblical reality that war is evil, and for being willing to oppose their authorities for their stance against war. They may be looked upon with ridicule by today's silent consenters and smug cogs in the machine that have learned to shut up and do as they're told, but maybe a wiser future

generation will look back at those rebels of the 60s and early 70s as the true heroes of the 20th century, and perhaps even as the last of their kind in history as we know it altogether. In my experiences with abundant acquaintances I've come to realize the fact that some people simply refuse to acknowledge the existence and reality of their mistakes, thus depriving themselves of the possibility to ever learn from them, but thus to remain "willingly ignorant," as the Bible puts it, which Kent Hovind appropriately translated into modern English as "dumb on purpose." What if an entire nation or generation chooses to be willingly ignorant, or "dumb on purpose?" It reminds me of one of those relics from the 60s which may have even sounded a little naive back then, but in the face of the reality of the past 4 decades, acquires a bitter by-taste: "When will they ever learn? - When will they ever learn?" If "there is no peace, saith my God, for the wicked," then I dare to re-define "the wicked" as "those who want no peace."

Hour of Temptation
A friend of mine lent me the book "The Shadows of Power" by James Perloff (the same guy who wrote "Tornado in a Junkyard"), and it put a few more pieces of the puzzle of the Endtime scenario together in my head, giving me a slightly clearer vision of how everything fits together. For one thing, I had always been wondering how come the Whore in Revelation (which I believe symbolizes America as the ultimate embodiment of the stray Church) is riding on the back of a beast that seems to resemble every world empire. But when one reads how the plans for the New World Order, the final and 7th world empire (from a biblical point of view) that is to rule the world before Christ's return were basically all made in New York (namely at the Council on Foreign Relations), and usually turned into profit for those same bankers who brought the CFR into being in the first place (including the virtual creation of Communism in Russia, China and Cuba, plus just about every single war in the 20th century), then it becomes obvious how the Whore would emerge fat and rich from the exploits of the NWO Beast she is riding so pompously on. Perloff's Book was written in 1988, only shortly before the collapse of the Sowjet Union, and thus, the foothold of Communism in Europe, consequently leading to China becoming more open for "the wine of her fornication" and the "delicacies" of capitalism as well, and one almost wonders if there's a connection between the fact that too many people were being made aware of what the CFR were up to (like the John Birch Society, or Gary Allen, who had written "None

Dare Call It Conspiracy" over a decade earlier), and perhaps caused them to change plans and create a new "Enemy" to replace Communism. It becomes obvious through the book that "the Establishment" (as Perloff politely refers to the CFR) used the threat of Communism and their supposed efforts to "stop" it (while in reality furthering it wherever they could) in order to pull wool over the public's eyes, enabling them to wage "police actions" in Korea, later Vietnam, etc., the same way the new culprit has enabled the Bush administration to unleash their unholy "War on Terror," terror basically standing for "Islam." Apparently unable to stop Christianity from flourishing, or perhaps even having fostered the growth of the wrong kind of Christianity (the kind that interprets "Love your enemies" as "put them out of their misery"), creating a new, turban-wearing and carpet-knives swinging "Enemy" that looked even more dangerous than the reds, was a welcome change in the scenario that made exposers of the NWO/CFR clique look as if they'd been barking up the wrong tree: "You see? You told everyone that we were going to use Communism to rule the world, and now it's dead, nyananya..." Another thing I gleaned from reading this book, even though there wasn't anything obvious written in it to indicate that, was that the architects of the NWO aren't in any kind of a hurry, and if they have to change plans, they'll change'em. Fundamental Christians often seem to see the final signs of the End, and the Coming of Christ being fulfilled in front of their eyes and unfolding in the News they're currently watching on TV: "Oh yeah, Bush must be the Antichrist!" Or, "No, it must be Obama!" As much as I wish for all this madness to come to an end as swiftly as anyone would, I'm coming to the conclusion that it's probably still going to take a little while before we'll see those final events unfold: a final New World Order established by 10 "kings" of both totalitarian and democratic territories (see Daniel 2:41), which will ultimately be spearheaded by one last, final and ultimate world dictator. The stage isn't quite ready for that yet. Which doesn't mean, though, that there isn't plenty of trouble brewing. The economy is going down, and will continue to go down, all in order to bring the rulers of the darkness of this world closer to their goal: a merging of currencies, eventually to be abolished and replaced by the Mark of the Beast. Food prices are not only going to soar, but explode, and whatever price it will cost the nations of this world in order to save their skin, they will pay it, even if it's their "sovereignty" or other freedoms. If you've been in the habit of "laboring for the meat which perisheth," as Jesus warned us all not to do, then you're also going to find out why He warned us not to do so. He knew what dangerous position this was eventually going to bring mankind into: "the hour of temptation which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth" (Rev.3:10).

The Best Employer

According to this Daily Telegraph article, Christians in Britain (as I'm sure elsewhere around the globe) are finding it harder to keep their jobs and positions in society. Maybe they're beginning to get a little taste of what true believers have had to endure since the onset of Christendom, before their martyrs moved from the arenas into the grandstands in the 4th century. During the first 3 centuries of Christianity's existence, believers had very similar problems: each trade within the Roman empire had their own guild, and without being a member of such, one could not practice the trade. One membership requirement was the annual offering up of incense to a Pagan deity, and if a Christian refused to offer incense, he would be expelled from the guild and thus find himself unable to practice his craft. Perhaps one reason why God sometimes allows such difficulties to arise is for His children to put their trust in Him, instead of the System, and if we truly consider ourselves Christians, perhaps to consider doing the job that Christ gave each of His followers to do: "Go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature" (Mark 16:15). I know, that sounds outrageously fanatical. "You mean, we're all supposed to become missionaries, huh!" Well, I didn't say that. All I know is what Jesus said: "Ye cannot serve God and Mammon," (Matth.6:24), one of my favorites among my list of Bible Verses Most Christians Choose to Ignore. In the minds of present day Christians, God seems to be capable of everything but taking care of them. We profess the Gospel of "Professionalism" as if it were the professions and jobs that are eternal, and not God's Word, and as if there never was any such thing as an economic crisis. Well, let's talk again in a year from now. Eventually, folks, it's going to come to that: you're just going to have to trust the Lord!

Mammon is a pretty fickle god, in whom I wouldn't put my trust any further than I can toss my Toyota. - Excuse me, my wife's Toyota. It doesn't really matter what you do, as long as you don't put your trust in Mammon or money, but "in the living God Who giveth us richly all things to enjoy" (1Tim.6:17). And if it really becomes difficult or impossible for you to do your job in whatever profession you've learned, perhaps you should consider doing the job God gave each of us to do, and do whatever you can to prove that you seek first the Kingdom of God by taking care of His flock, especially the lost sheep out there, who are not yet in the fold. There are so many ways to do that nowadays. Most of all by becoming living samples of a living faith in a living God, Who is not unable to care for us, even if we'll never get another job in this life! Take it from someone who hasn't had another employer for 29 years. God is the best!

God Vs. B3

When it all comes down to it, the problem with the world is largely its indifference and its blatant lack of interest in its Creator. Guess I had it already basically pinned down when I wrote that song, "Indifference." The problem is that everybody thinks that they are so much more interesting than God, and whatever they've got to say is so much more important. Back in the 60s and 70s people were still willing to listen to what songwriters like Bob Dylan, James Taylor or Donovan had to say. Today's generation is more interested in boobs wiggling to the monotonous stomp-beat of the umpteenth re-make of some song of the 80s that most teens haven't heard yet, and in putting their own voices to the karaoke soundtrack of that re-make, and wiggle their own butts & boobs (henceforth referred to as "B&Bs"), the way they've learned it from Britney & co. It's not that I'm opposed to B&Bs. But I am opposed to stupidity, (not referring to stupidity as lack of knowledge, but rather the tendency to continue to make the wrong choices, due to

setting false priorities) which is probably our 2nd biggest Enemy, right after our indifference. Or maybe it's our stupidity that causes us to be so indifferent... Okay, so, our job as Christians or believers in God is to arouse people's interest in Him and make them reconsider, What on earth makes you so sure that you're that much more interesting than the Creator of the Universe? Our job is to remind the creation that it's not No.1, after all. As I say, it was easier to use music back in the days when folks would listen to the lyrics, and the lyrics actually meant something. Back then, it was even possible to win a few souls by wiggling B&Bs to the tune of a Gospel song. Nowadays you'd just get lost in a sea of'em... It's hard to keep the vision of the Great Commission the Lord has given us to spread His Good News everywhere and preach the Gospel to every creature when every creature seems to be too infatuated with themselves to give the Good News of Creator's love the time of day. Certainly writing just another despairing blog isn't going to do the trick... But it usually helps me to think & crystallize my thoughts, & perhaps come up with a good idea. I think God needs that. He needs a few more people with good ideas, but who are willing to use those good ideas to win souls, and not just make a big buck. Not that I'm opposed to big bucks, either. But I am opposed to greed. It's probably our 3rd biggest enemy, right after our stupidity and indifference... And let's face it, folks: one reason why a substantial amount of people is becoming sicker of "Christianity" by the hour is because of its promoters' passion for shuffling dough and building big fancy buildings while 10.000 people are starving every day, and that number is bound to increase this year, due to the things our greed has done to this planet and our global agriculture. Maybe what's going to get people interested in God (- and I'm not talking about the kind of "interest" where God & Jesus are hip because over half of the population goes to one of the churches on every block -) is going to be the consequences of where our lack of interest in Him is going to lead us. Maybe what it's going to take is a crisis. Maybe trouble is actually good for us, and is going to do more for our souls' welfare than all the wiggling and shaking of B&B's in the world put together... And maybe our job is just to be there when the time arrives, to remind people that there is a God and He loves them, even if they wouldn't have given a hoot about Him before the trouble came...

If that's the case, let it be, and "bring on the night," if that's what it takes to wake us up. Some of us seem to be awake, but paralyzed at the same time, unable to do anything to wake up anyone else. Maybe that's going to change soon. As soon as the repercussions of the current crisis will have hit the more sheltered regions of the world, and those parts of town where business still goes on as usual. "Business as usual" doesn't seem to be good for our relationship with our Creator. "Because they have no changes, therefore they fear not God." "Business as usual" creates indifference, stupidity and greed, because who was ever satisfied with what they have in the business of raking in ever more? If that's the case, let's have some change, and not just wait for it to happen. Changing the world - if anybody's still interested in that endeavor - starts with us, and it behooves us to change and adapt our attitudes, methods and whatever it takes to remind ourselves and others that there is yet something or Someone more important than the 3 Bs (boobs, butts & bucks). Let's see if we can't convince a substantial amount of folks that God is actually capable of topping those. (After all, He's the Inventor of at least the first 2 Bs, and maybe there's more where that came from...) Remember that 80s movie with George Burns, "Oh God, II" in which God recruits a little girl to start an advertisement campaign for Him? We need something like that... A slogan like "Think God!" or "God first" or ... "God beats boobs, butts & bucks"... C'mon, help me out here! Of course, it's natural that people want admiration, attention and recognition, and I'm not advocating depriving anybody of that. Long live the marvels of God's creation! But all I'm saying is, first thing's still first, and we ought to give credit where it's due, & not exclude the Creator from His creation, as they have pretty much done over here in Europe for the past 150 years, and proud of it and celebrating the event, as if the ascent of homo sapiens was something we could pat ourselves on the back for. What it all boils down to is that love (being God) beats sex, the Creator is actually more worthy of our attention and worship than His creation, and yes, there is even something more marvelous and magnificent to adore than our wee little selves, and that's the One Who made us & loves us even more than we could ever love ourselves (and that in spite of all He knows about us.)

The Heavens Declare

One drift that is currently or since a few years going around on the web is the notion that since there are so many similarities between ancient deities and religions and the story of Jesus, Christianity and its whole story must be a fabrication, and some go as far to claim that religion altogether seems to be a plot cooked up by the Illuminati to enslave mankind. Certainly these people must be doing the Illuminati or whatever forces intend to enslave mankind a great favor by spreading their erroneous idea. While it may be reasonable to conclude that similarities, such as the resemblance between the Babylonian "son of god" Tammuz and Jesus must be more than a coincidence, just as much as it was reasonable for Darwin to conclude from his observation of finches on Galapagos that changes are happening within creatures that help them to adapt to their environment, when that same train of thought and "reason" is spun further to an extreme, total nonsense comes out of it. You've got to know when to tell your own mind to "stop! Thus far and no further!" What the great conspiracy theory heroes like the producer of the movie "Zeitgeist," and other similar Youtube productions, or Reptilians-Specialist David Icke fail to see is the very legitimate reason for the similarities between the Gospel story and the tales of previous religions of Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Greece and Rome: These ancient religions were all based on astrology. And while millions of Christians around the world pee in their pants at the mere utterance of the world "astrology" because they know that it's one of the corner stones of witchcraft and paganism, their sin of fear is depriving the world of some very valuable and ancient knowledge, which tends to become forgotten, but does not have to be. The secret is that God had written the Gospel story in the stars, way before we ever saw it unfold, exactly like it is said in the Psalms: "The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth His handiwork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge. There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard. Their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. In them hath He set a tabernacle for the sun." (Psalm 19:1-4)

We all know that passage and love it because it sounds so mystically poetic, but few people really know what it means. Thankfully, some people do, and have overcome their fears of what fellow Christians might think of them if they would write a book about naughty, naughty astrology, and if enough people cared about the truth, we could all relax in the knowledge that it was God, not the Devil, who created not only the stars "for signs and for seasons" (Genesis 1:14), but also the zodiac. According to William D. Banks and his book "The Heavens Declare," the origins of the zodiac dates back to Enoch (yes, the guy who walked with God, and "wasn't found," and from whom we've got the word "inch," coincidentally). The word zodiac having its true origins in Hebrew ("the path" - coincidentally the name Early Christians gave their new faith among believers), and prophetically telling the story of Jesus, the "Lamb slain from the foundation of the world" (Rev.13:8), - depicted in the star sign Aries, the ram, or lamb - beginning with the virgin Mary (Virgo), telling about the price He would pay (Libra) to free us from the grip of the Enemy (Scorpio) by pointing the arrow of His truth at his heart (Sagittarius), being the Scapegoat for our sins (Capricorn), pouring forth the waters of His Word (Aquarius), gathering His church [called-out ones] (Pisces) to be a Coming Ruler (Taurus), representing both God and man, King and servant, Savior and sufferer in one (Gemini), to gather His flock into His fold (Cancer) upon His Return as the rightful Heir, King and Ruler over all (Leo), to give the gist of the story in a nutshell. The names of the stars in these signs have in all "speeches and languages," as Psalm 19 says, told the Story of "the One that was to come" for millennia before His actual birth, and since the stars were a major source of information to the scholars and wise men of the ancient empires, it's no wonder that their religion sounded so similar to what Christianity would become. To conclude that the similarities between them are a result of man concocting His own idea of God is comparable to Darwin's conclusion that creation "concocted" itself - the only tolerable explanation for those who refuse to make room for God in their lives, regardless of the fact that life could never have created itself without information or intelligence, which always - undeniably and without exceptions - has an Author. Conspiracy authors and filmmakers are thus unwittingly contributing to the cause of the very forces they try to expose, by tossing the only solution and hope of freedom for mankind into the same pot, confining humanity to the mental prison of an existence for no particular reason or purpose which already has created more misery than any other dogma in the past century. The only hope they offer is that one day mankind will become enlightened enough to save itself from its own stupor, which generally is the same basis of all false religions and philosophies from Cain to Marx, based on the self-righteous assumption that one kind of people - for whatever reason - is better than the other, and thus deserves the position of power and authority over them. If that doesn't sound like NWO-Philosophy, what else does? The dilemma with the world is that nobody ever realizes that the attitude that they know better than God is precisely the predicament that has landed them in the mess they're in.

Den of Thieves

Someone called me up some time ago and said, "You're the only dude on the Internet who's giving his music away for free." Well, maybe so. But I've got it from Someone Who I consider a greater and more reliable authority on happiness than those John Denver referred to as "them money-hungry fools." You never read about Jesus charging an entrance fee for His sermon on the mount, nor did He charge for a single one of His fish sandwiches (although I'm sure He could have raked in a fortune). It just wasn't in Him. His credo was, "Freely ye have received, freely give," and in my opinion one of the greatest disgraces about Christendom is the machine of commerce that it has been for more than 16 centuries, with no improvement in sight anywhere (at least not voluntarily). Thank God the Antichrist is going to appear some time to put an end to all of that with his "mark of the Beast," which will divide the wheat from the chaff, anyway. Jesus made it pretty plain what he thought of that commercialized hybrid of religion or spirituality when He chased the vendors out of the temple. Imagine Him coming to the Vatican or your average drive-in church nowadays, or the mega-temples of the star evangelists. He probably knows why he chose to appear 2000 years before things would get really sick. Of course, nobody ever believes all that stuff He had to say about not being able to serve God and Mammon (the god of riches), and about the birds in the air and the lilies of the field, and that the heavenly father would supply all our needs, just as He does theirs, if we would only seek first His Kingdom. "Seeking first" the Kingdom would mean that that's what you'd invest the majority of your time and efforts in, instead of raking in all the cash you can. If you dedicate your time to serving Him and making sure that folks get His message (without having to pay a fortune for it), then, He says, He will also take care of your needs.

If you preach the Gospel and spread the Good News, then He'll make sure that you can also live off the Gospel. Of course, if you only preach to those who've heard the Gospel a thousand times or more, and they're willing to pay a fortune for your sedating sermons that will assure them they'll escape the wrath of God for our collective selfishness and greed, then you'll have good cards as far as the god of this world is concerned, and the game that he's playing, but God may think differently about that kingdom you have built for yourself. It's called "modesty," a trait long forgotten and forlorn, and it has an even more recent hero than Jesus and His early followers, namely the Italian monk St. Francis, who bucked the tide of the religious supermarket of his day and decide to be content with little for a change. He saw a lot of misery, but I also believe that he knew more true happiness than most other folks in his day. One of the secrets of life is the art of not falling for every single temptation the Devil offers us along the way; it's the art of saying "No, thank you!" every once in a while, "I already have enough." I guess some people are starting to reap the first repercussion of the "never enough" attitude that has been prevailing in our modern, enlightened Western society for the past decades. But will we really have learned the lesson when and IF the economy recovers?

Monkey See, Monkey Do

Coming to grips with the fact that we're probably closer to the end of the world than most of us are willing to admit, always keeps drawing my thoughts back to its beginnings. Life is a constant choice between positive or good and valid input and information, and its negative, non-valid, bad counterpart. Only discernment and experience teach us to know the difference. We're all basically standing at the same tree as did Adam and Eve.

The only difference is, all around us are billions of people who have already tasted the fruit of the knowledge of evil (= bad information), and they're all telling us, "It's good! C'mon, take a bite! I've done it, too! It's the only way!" We don't only have the Devil to deal with in our struggle to resist temptation, but also his favorite weapon of the century: peer pressure. What once used to require cunning persuasion on his part now merely takes an appeal to our basest herd instincts: "Monkey see, monkey do." There's a lot of "input" out there, and it's pretty tough to know which of it is good and which is bad. It's not easy to make an estimate, but I'd say probably 90% of what bombards us is mostly negative. The difficult thing is, that the Enemy is smart enough not to hand us 100% pure evil information, but what makes it all the more dangerous and deceptive is that he always mixes it with some truth. Nothing has changed about that since his first sales talk. After all, it was true that they weren't going to die physically at the time they ate of the fruit, and we already expounded on that it was true in a sense that they became like gods, if even God Himself calls them thus later on in His Word... So, I guess the conclusion is that nothing saves us from bad info, except the experience of what happened once we swallowed and accepted it... It builds us up in a wrong way. It feeds your ego, but not your soul. It may fill your head with "knowledge" but doesn't make you one bit wiser. It may lead you to the conclusion that "there is no God," and that you and your own kind are the only masters and heroes of the universe, and yet leave you utterly ignorant of the fact that in God's dictionary, you thus become the perfect definition of a fool. It may make you feel hip and cool, but on God's thermometer you may merely amount to the status of "lukewarm." You may think you're "hot 'n' heavy," not realizing that you've been weighed in the scales of the Creator of the universe, and found wanting. What it all boils down to when all the dross and muck has up and gone into smoke and vapor is the truth: coming to face yourself for what you really are, namely not much, if anything at all, without a connection with the One Who put you on the planet, and the single Authority on why.

But that's a great place to start, because it begins the process of your willingness to absorb the other stuff, that formerly totally unattractive type of input you would have sneered at when you still thought you were the king of the hill. It may not immediately make sense to you... But slowly, as you keep immersing your soul and parched spirit in it, eventually it begins to make sense, and you begin to derive so much information out of even one formerly seemingly meaningless phrase, such as, "In the beginning was the Word..." (John 1:1) It all began with information... the right kind of input, and... yeah, you want more of it! Lots more!

Big Picture Vol.1-3

Of all good things there are three. Three versions of God: Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Yet One. Three atoms to every water molecule. Yet they form one entity. There are three editions of what I like to call "The Big Picture." One is here and has probably always been. The second one is here and has come forth from the first. The third will be, and will consist of both previous ones. And it will stay forever. The first edition of "The Big Picture" is the Spirit World -dwelling place of God and His Holy Family, expanding to probably countless of His sons and daughters, both, faithful and fallen. While it would probably take an eternity to catch up on the information that presently eludes us concerning this part of the Big Picture, it probably is also the one that is the least attractive or interesting to most of us. The 2nd version or part of the Big Picture is the physical realm, what we call the universe, including the time line of its history, and is so to speak a product of the former, since it was information uttered by God that brought it into being (see Hebrews 11:3).

It's the one that usually intrigues us the most. Partly because it's "ours," at least for the time being. It's probably not incorrect to say that this part of the Picture is in a somewhat imperfect state. The 3rd and final stage of the Big Picture is the combination of BP1 and 2: the Spirit World and the physical realm united and merged into one. This event is forecast and described in such places as the Book of Revelation, when it talks about the Abode of God coming down from Heaven to dwell on (a new) earth forever (Rev.21:15). The final and ultimate version of the Big Picture will be this one, the 3rd, and it will probably shed more light on both previous ones for its inhabitants, if such a thing as "previous" will be of any relevance. But I do think so, since God isn't known to easily discard origins or dishonor his chosen patriarchs. While man has presently contented himself with the confidence that his heritage is that of treeclimbing mammals, God has never been thus cruel to us, to deprive us of a slightly nobler past and heritage, even if it begins with nothing more than 2 perfect, naked humans in a perfect place, unfortunately not perfectly happy with it. What we consider fairy-tales, God calls our history, and when history will be done, then I guess we will know what will have been fairy tales, and what the reality. The reality of God, as announced in BP3, will be greater than any fairy tale man could have ever cooked up.

The War On Christ

One of the trademarks of the infamous Antichrist as foretold in the Bible, is that he will wage war against "the saints*." In the language of our times that spells persecution. Persecution of all those that God deems righteous. The only qualification to meet that criteria is having accepted the sacrifice of the Righteous One, Whom the Western World refers to as Jesus the Christ, and whom His original Mideastern followers have called Yashua, the Messiah. If the Devil is a reality (and if you look around, you can't deny the evidence), and all that is written about him in the Scripture is a reality, then those Scriptures that prophesy his incarnation in one final world ruler at the end of the world as we know it must also be a reality. All that I have observed over the past 4 decades has gradually built up a perception of that reality, which by now - as unfortunately as it may be considered by some - has become unshakable. The "war against the saints" has begun a while ago, even if it may have been duped different things. If there was ever a period in which it seemed as if all those Bible prophecies were false, and Christianity was actually becoming more and more popular and recognized by society, I think that period has just about come to an end. Satan's had his heroes in his war against Christ since the beginning of time, and probably some of his greatest progress in the past decade has been achieved by the Bush administration. Just the fact that this most un-popular of all presidencies posed as "Christian," (and by now there has emerged sufficient evidence that it was not genuinely so), was a genius strategic act of the anti-christ forces that have cost Christendom at least 8 points on a popularity scale from 1 to 10 (and it wasn't at 10 when the count started). It's not as if the tactic was entirely new. After all, kingdoms and empires and those who ruled them - nowadays we call them politicians - have often posed as "Christians" while pursuing their true goals of power by means of eliminating the other side (not seldom the true believers), which is what Jesus referred to when He prophesied, "The time cometh, that whosoever killeth

you will think that he doeth God service" (John 16:22). Some of them must have genuinely thought that they fought on the right side, but they were genuinely and sincerely wrong. As James Taylor sang, "You just can't kill for Jesus." Now with Obama"in power" (or at least filling the puppet post of pretense of power) the rest of the world is heaving a sigh of relief that America has come back to her senses, away from all that Christian fanaticism that surely must have been the root of all evils and woes in this world. A new age of reason has been ushered in, soon to enlighten those who wish to be "enlightened" and to eliminate those who refuse to be. You can make your own guess on which side of that war your government is fighting, your country's school system or the scientific community, the mainstream media, or such day-to-day conveniences as Google, for that matter. And while you're at it... your employers?... Yourself? Unfortunately, many of those supposedly fighting for the side of Christ in this battle aren't actively participating, because they believe that Christ will whisk them away from the battle field before the battle even starts. The battle will come over them unexpectedly and virtually catch them with their pants down, unprepared, unexperienced in wielding the spiritual weaponry of faith and the Word of God, and weakened by countless temptations and distractions brought on them by the gods in whose temples they actually spent most of their time: Mammon (god of wealth), Mars (god of war), Bacchus (god of addictions) and the likes. Instead of helping to strengthen and arm their brothers and sisters around the world, a lot of supposed "soldiers of the cross" seek to enrich themselves by fleecing the sheep instead of feeding them, as Ezekiel prophesied. What would Jesus do if He came into the modern temples of today? Would He act any differently than He did when He chased out those who had made a market hall of His Father's house? So, where are the true shepherds, Whom the Lord will find feeding His sheep when He comes? May God have mercy and replace the love of money in our hearts with love for the lost. No physical wall you will have erected around yourself will protect you from the war on the saints when it will break loose, only real faith. It's the only currency that will survive the purging fires that are going to sweep across the world. *Scriptures on "The War Against the Saints": Dan.7:21, Dan.8:24, 25; Rev.13:7, 17:12-14, 19:19

Great Depression Vol.2 - Where've Ya Been?

Religious lunatics all have certain qualities in common: they drive you insane, irritate you, make you hate them, want to wipe them off the face of the earth, strangle them, persecute them, exterminate them... But the deadliest of all their qualities is that sometimes they just happen to be so painfully right about some of their predictions. When the Jewish prophet Jeremiah predicted that his country was going to be conquered by the Babylonians, his distinguished colleagues dared to differ by the hundreds. So vehemently in fact, that they threw him in some hole in the ground. But it was shortly thereafter that Jeremiah was pulled out of the hole on behalf of the Babylonians who had conquered Judea regardless of contrary predictions of peace and prosperity made by hundreds of false, though respected, prophets. Three days before His crucifixion, Jesus announced - when His disciples marveled at the architectural structure of the Jewish temple in Jerusalem - that it was going to be destroyed. In fact, that not one stone was going to be left upon the other. The Jews - as usual - dared to differ, and continued to rebel against Rome until Jerusalem was besieged in 70.A.D., precisely 40 years after Jesus' prediction. When the citizens of Jerusalem barricaded themselves inside the temple, the Romans set fire to it, causing the gold in the temple to melt. In order to get a hold of it, the Romans virtually pulled every brick off another. No wonder Jesus still doesn't have many friends in the Mideast - regardless of how much money Christians keep pouring into it. (After all, they want to be on good terms with the "chosen people." Except that they missed some details about why Jesus had to die in the first place.) The truth simply isn't very popular. Nor were the predictions made by David Berg in the 70s about impending doom and destruction for America, whom he identified with "Babylon, the

Great Whore" in the Book of Revelation, chapters 17 and 18, whose riches - so says the Bible would come to naught within one hour. Most American Christians like to interpret those chapters differently, just like they do the rest of the Bible, and the culprit "Babylon," in their version, is the city of Rome, the capital of poor old Italy in Europe... But that's another story I'm not going to get off on again. Mr. Berg (also known as "Moses David" during the 70s), also predicted that an economic crash would precede the apocalyptic destruction the Bible heralded, an economic crisis, similar to the Great Depression of the 1930s, only much worse, which would usher in a New World Order, eventually spear headed by the notorious Antichrist, who would solve the World's financial woes by a new cashless monetary system, in which cash would be replaced by a "mark," - a computer chip or digital imprint - in each world citizen's head or forehead, as also predicted by St. John the Revelator. While it yet remains to be told whether our current crisis is indeed that dreaded one which is to usher in the End of the World as we know it, the number of those who draw the connection between now and the Great Depression increases daily, and not just among religious freaks. And whether it will result in the introduction of the Antichrist and his "mark of the Beast" also remains to be seen, but what we have got already is Henry Kissinger telling the American public on television that Barrack Obama would be the man to seize the golden opportunity within that crisis, to sell the world the New World Order. I have stated before why I don't believe that the Antichrist will be American, and I, like everyone else, would hope like everyone else, that we all still live many happy years in a prosperous world. IF I hadn't seen what excessive prosperity and ease can do to people... I also wouldn't want to come across as some wise guy who rejoices in the plight and ill fate of others just so he can say "Told you so." But I also know from experience and the things we never learn from history, that time will do the talkin' about who were the "lunatics" and who were the false prophets. It took the Great Depression about 5 years until it finally hit the last wealthy family in Suburbia. Years that gave rise to a man in whom many see the epitome of Antichrist. Mrs. Angela Merkel recently said that "the worst is already over." I will be as bold to label her one of the false prophets of our time. (After all, no leader of government could ever earn my respect by hauling away a 15 year old from her home with 16 cops for being home-schooled.) I will be so bold as to proclaim that if you think Hitler and the Great Depression were bad, you ain't seen nuthin' yet. I hate to be another party-pooper and religious lunatic. Of course, I'd much prefer to be popular, like everyone else does. I'd love to close my eyes to any impending evil and say, "Hey, but we

don't deserve this! We've all been good boys and girls." I would, if I'd stand a chance in a million that my face would not turn tomato red and my nose wouldn't sprout twigs and leaves like Pinocchio's, after saying so.

Christianity Now and in 30 A.D. - The Differences!

I've expounded before on the tragic abyss between what Christianity has become and once used to be, and in my opinion ought to be, due to the fact that fundamental teachings of Christ Himself and His early spokesmen are purposely being ignored by His modern supposed followers, resulting in the constant discomfort of having to apologize for the rest of the world for pertaining to a group of people, which, originally, truly was a ray of hope for anyone who believed in the depth of his heart that there had to be something else besides the usual games people play, with their rules of acquisition of power, fame, fortune and temporal glory. As a Christian, I see it as part of my duty to rectify that the crimes Christianity has been found guilty of for the past 16 centuries (and unfortunately, during the current one more than ever), were not at all in its Founder's intention. Somewhere around the 4th century, after having failed to wipe out the church (meaning "ecclesia," Greek for "the called out ones") through persecution, Satan finally changed his attitude toward Christianity into "If you can't lick'em, join'em." The result is the sad picture of what Christendom has become since. But what was it like before that? What were the differences, and which was the way the early followers of Christ lived that are such a stark contrast to what may be labeled "Christianity" today, but really, only amounts to not much more than Churchianity? One blatant contrast that jumps in my face time and time again, is the materialistic attitude that has taken hold of probably the vast part of Christendom throughout the past millennium and a half, as totally opposed to what Jesus Himself, and His most ardent representative of the 1st century, the apostle Paul of Tarsus (aka St. Paul) had to say on such subjects as money, wealth, and one's dedication to the acquisition of such.

Most Christians are apparently totally oblivious to the fact that the Early Christians lived in a totally unique style which could perhaps be termed "total, holy Communism." In fact, it was the prototype of communism, and the only type that ever worked, since it's impossible to achieve it by leaving out the main Factor, which happens to be God and His supernatural love. The reason most people are totally ignorant of this, is because they either simply don't read their Bibles, or they only read and remember the parts they like. Apparently none of those Sunday morning assemblers who proudly present their attire and vehicles in those pompous palaces they named after the assembly of those who died as martyrs in Christ's footsteps, after having lived their lives in modesty, has ever seriously pondered the statements we find in the Book of Acts on how Christians lived back then. It doesn't say there, "And all that believed assembled once a week in the temple to sing, pray and listen to the preacher for an hour, and then drove home, each in their car and to their own houses, spending the rest of the week in the pursuit of their happiness, aka financial stability." What it does say, is, "And all that believed were together and had all things common. And sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need. ...Neither said any of them that any of the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things common." (Acts 2:44, 45, 4:32). You can only imagine the average Christian's head-shaking attitude toward such a radical lifestyle, of people living together and sharing all things... When it boils down to it, neither Jesus, nor Paul, John or James had much good to say about money, or rich people. The next vast gap between Christianity now and then - which I have repeatedly addressed in my blogs, because i just can't do the subject justice - is the current "Christian" attitude towards war, their silent consent to their nations' government sending their own sons (and daughters) off to foreign countries under often more than shady and questionable pretexts, to kill and maim their often totally innocent citizens by the hundreds of thousands. It is unthinkable that Christians during the first 3 centuries would have given their consent, had the Romans called upon them to join the empire in one of its military actions against other countries. Of course, all that changed with the crusades. But whether you can rectify having the audacity of calling that "Christianity," you have to decide for yourself, especially in the light of all Jesus had to say on the subject. Christians in the first 3 centuries were a persecuted minority, not - as has been the case since fake Christendom became a world power - a persecuting majority and ruthless authority. It is really no wonder that some people think that the world would be better off without the scourge of Christianity falsely so-called, and if you ask me, that's where the future of "Christendom" is headed: elimination by the same tactics it has applied on the inhabitants of much of the world

for centuries. Luckily, this will separate the true sheep from the goats and expose who was really "in it" for the right and wrong reasons... In the final analysis, it seems that Christianity was certainly better off in its original state, and from the looks of it, we're going to have to face the fact that that's where Christianity is headed again: back to the ranks of the persecuted minorities, instead of those of the ruthless oppressors, even if it will be the latter that will bring the persecution upon themselves, (and even if most of them probably won't see the writing on the wall before it's too late). What Christians worldwide ought to do is get "Back to the Basics," "trim the fat" and return to its humble origins, instead of trying to play the rulers in a world that is currently run by Christ's enemies. They'd do a whole lot better to heed the Words of their Founder, instead of the false prophets' tales of peace when there is no peace, and of prosperity gained by the exploitation of the poor of the world, which God simply cannot bless. As long as Christians chime, "God bless America, no matter what," they show that they put themselves above the very laws of God, and thus become an abomination to Him, and will only reap the consequences accordingly. They should seek their God for the kind of courage that their spiritual forefathers many centuries ago had, who were willing to be despised and persecuted as members of that obscure sect that followed a Leader Who had challenged all the existing values of the world. Unfortunately, not many of us seem to be nearly as strong as Jesus was when the Devil tempts us with the riches of this world. Most of us give him a warm welcome, throw our arm around his neck and say to Jesus, "See ya on Sunday!"

What Do We Really Know At All? (Or: The Evolution of Politics)

One more aspect in which we seem to be living in a scenario comparable to the one portrayed in the Matrix movie trilogy, turns out to be history, and especially our recent history, if one happens to stumble across issues as those revolving around the controversial British historian David Irving. It's pretty obvious that some of the claims made by the Soviets at the Nuremberg trials were false, and yet there seems to be no area in our present scope of political thought where light shed on potential facts which might alter our current view and knowledge on these things is more ardently and vehemently resisted. While scientists, journalists and educators may lose their jobs for even lending an ear to alternative views of the ancient history of our planet (as in what exactly happened "billions of years ago," instead of the gazillions of beneficial mutations that are supposed to have brought forth the human race, whales crawling out on land and back into the water, etc.), such as the number of scientists who developed the school of thought of "Intelligent Design" had the nerve to do; and while guesswork and theories on physics are the only goodies teachers can sell their pupils in schools for facts, far from an ultimate theory that explains it all, without one law of nature contradicting another; when it comes to history, it becomes even more prickly, since people who are interested in finding out what really happened as recently as 60-some years ago, might not only risk their jobs, or their students' enthusiasm, but their very freedom, health or lives. It seems that our oh-so-enlightened Western democracies aren't that much of a Wonderland of the Free, after all, as which our modern politicians try to sell us our current system. Speaking of which. According to God's views, as laid down in His much disputed account of such (nevertheless found to be absolutely reliable by those who have the guts to believe it), the Bible, the evolution of politics over the past 2500 years isn't quite as flattering as we may see our own current state. The prophet Daniel (in an interpretation of the king of Babylon's dream, given to him by God) pictures the world's empires from Babylon to Rome as deteriorating. While Babylon is symbolized by a head of gold, the subsequent empire, Medo-Persia, becomes silver, Alexander the Great and his Grecian empire turn out with a bronze medal, and Rome is devaluated to

mere iron, only to wind up in a useless mixture of clay and iron good for nothing but to be replaced by God's eternal kingdom toward the end of the world as we know it. So, while we look back at ancient rulers and systems as primitive, from our high and lofty democratic pedestal, God, evidently, has a perfectly different view of things. We don't even have to go as far back as Babylon or Rome to note drastic differences. While we know by now that neither Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, FDR or even JFK were flawless, yet they all seem to have had a residue of nobility and honor that perfectly eludes our 21st century statesmen. And while some of us may still live in the illusion that the current administration is an improvement on the stock, compared to the former, as shocking as it may be for all of us, judging by the Wall-Street nature of that administration, it would be a very big surprise indeed, if that illusion will not turn out to be just such. 20th century statesmen at least attempted to speak the truth every now and then, and when they made promises, they made somewhat of an effort to keep them, which is more than you can expect from the puppet position that a presidency has become in Century 21. "You never know when the sky will fall. What do we really know at all?" the "Rembrandts" from California once sang, and they must have been on to something. What do we really know at all? What of all that which we call "knowledge" could really be called such? Isn't it much more often simply faith in the portrayal of the picture by a certain group of people, the "winners," those who have the money and the propaganda machinery? So, why not be honest and reduce the preposterous claim of "knowledge" to that which it really is, namely faith? After all, it has served true believers good and well for thousands of years, all throughout history, where empires and emperors have come and gone. Maybe St. John was really on to something when he claimed that our faith is the victory that would overcome the world. Maybe we know something they don't. Maybe we really know something. Even if it's just a fact as simple as the one that says "There is a God, and He loves you," along with His Promises that someday soon He'll save us out of the mess all those big shots are getting us into in the name of illumination. Oh, and along with the promise that we'll know then, even as we are known. You really want to know what happened? Just hang on a little longer.

Let's Get Physical

Smart people can be really dumb sometimes. I've been doing some catching up on the current state of physics lately, since the subject had utterly failed to grasp my interest in school, and I was pleased to see that folks seem to be getting a little bit closer to the real thing, as far as my gut feeling tells me. At least they're now almost ready to accept other, additional dimensions, aside from the ones they can see and perceive with their physical senses. It's not as if they would have done it voluntarily, but they were practically forced to broaden their scope in order for their equations to make sense and get General Relativity to match with Quantum Mechanics. So, they're coming up with all sorts of fancy, big names for their fancy, big theories of the origin of everything: The "Final Theory," "Super-String Theory," "M-Theory," about which no one can tell you what the "M" is supposed to stand for, but one possible interpretation was "Matrix" theory, which I, of course, particularly like. So, they're practically ready to accept that there's a "matrix" of some sort, but then go to such lengths and painstaking efforts, spending decades of their lives and trillions of dollars (as long as they're still worth anything) on equipment and tests that are supposed to come with proof for a theory that's going to make sense of everything, feverishly making sure that if they ever find it, it will still make sense leaving out the most important and always remaining (whether they like it or not) Factor: God. As in, the Dude Who constructed the matrix. The only way they get around Him, of course, is by proposing that in order to get the jack pot universe we live in that provides just all the necessary fine-tuned settings to make life possible at all, there are (possibly) countless other universes, most of which, by sheer mathematical probability, didn't turn out as lucky. That is, of course, where I - and, thankfully, other believers dare to differ, since you don't have to come up with such ridiculous hypotheses once you're willing to accept that just as behind every other shred of information that ever came into being there was an author, so it also happens to be the case with that giga machine we call the universe, and the infinite amount of information, planning and intelligence it requires to function. Although God created us in our image, He's not a crazy scientist that needs endless trial & error runs to see if His "experiment" is going to work out. Unlike our earthly, human scientists, He knows what He's doing, thank God! We're in good hands. As long as we don't try to make the bill without Him and insist on locking Him out of His own game; because He cannot save us from our own stupidity as long as we refuse to be saved.

So, it all boils back down to the theme of my previous post: faith. It's either faith in, and acceptance of the fact that there is, of course, an Author behind the slew of information and genius that slapped the universe (= literally: "single spoken sentence") together, or in the one gross exception, the mysterious "singularity," which claims that contrary to everything we ever have observed, and in defiance of all the voices in creation that constantly scream the opposite, from the tiniest cell to the most complex galaxy, it all simply "happened" by itself. Back to the additional dimensions. The fathers of M-Theory have come up with the number 10 (plus time), otherwise their equations wouldn't figure. What a "coincidence" that the structure of the universe should be based on the same system that has been tried and proven down on yerol'-blue-planet (including its own solar system and the outer extremities of its prominent inhabitants, etc.)! What a coincidence that everything might just consist of tiny, either open-ended or looped "strings," (1s and 0s?), as if Somebody was trying to get everybody's attention: "Hello!? Anybody listening?" Then on the other hand we've got fundamental Christians who refuse to accept the possibility of 10+1 dimensions, because they're not mentioned in the Bible. Well, neither are telephones or microwave ovens, but they probably use them anyway. So, on one hand we've got the believers who claim that God stopped communicating and passing on any additional information to His crowning creation 2000 years ago, and on the other, scientists who refuse to accept the image of such an astute-but-mute God, and it's almost like, "Well, can you blame'em?" I get kicks out of imagining the surprises either might get upon their arrival in that extra dimension to which our spirit inevitably passes the moment our physical bodies cease to function (a dimension of which the Bible has spoken for millennia, by the way): "Oh, so You DO exist, after all, do Ya!?" And the other guys, "Y...Y...You m...m...mean, You can actually t...t...talk??? And I thought...." Well, that's what ya get for thinking. I'm slowly coming to the conclusion that believing is in many ways better than thinking. Just have the guts to believe what everybody else says is impossible: There IS a God, He loves you, and He's got something to say! - To YOU!

Divine Physics

There are basically only three kinds of people when it comes to exploring the mysteries of our origins: those who believe that the Clock-Maker made the clockwork, those who believe that a coincidental explosion made the clock-work, and those who are not sure which of the other two are right. The difference between the first two is that Coincidental Explosion (CE) proponents are the guys with all the money, the support and the time to elaborate so extensively on their studies of how exactly coincidence exploded into such a brilliant clock-work, that the few who dare to defy them and insist that behind the clock-work of the universe has to be a Maker just the same way as it was with any Rolex, look rather ridiculous in comparison, and a substantial amount of the third group join in the laughter of the CE proponents, even if they may not have the faintest clue what they're laughing about. They see the other, big, rich and mean guys laugh, and so they laugh along. Call it peer pressure, monkey-see-monkey-do, copy-cat-ism, you get the point. Far from being the lunatics, religious fanatics and scum of the earth the CE media make their counterparts out to be, some of the Clock-Worker's defenders actually do have a brain, wellfunctioning ones at that, and are even - occasionally - blessed with time to investigate the possible veracity of the blueprint of our origins the Clock-Maker left us. From the CE side of the fence, the claim that the first chapter of the Bible may have anything to say about where the universe came from sounds totally ridiculous. After all: you see the universe expanding, press the "reverse" button and you get the picture of the Big Bang. Only idiots would deny that. Possibly. At first glance, perhaps. But then all the decades and gazillions of dollars poured into a substantial proof for "how it happened" only got the CE camp close to the ever-elusive break-through, always near the edge, but never quite there.

If only a fraction of the funds and efforts would have gone into investigating whether possibly something might be true about the creation account in Genesis, I personally believe, we'd all know a lot more by now. One of the brave few who has wracked his brain in such a comparatively lone attempt, is D.Russell Humphreys, Ph.D., author of the 1994 book "Starlight and Time - Solving the Puzzle of Distant Starlight in a Young Universe" which to my shame I must admit I only took off my shelf now, after 2 years or so of buying it. While Humphreys may not have it all figured out to a tee (and I'm not familiar with any updates on his theories), he makes at least as much sense to me as the much appraised Stephen Hawking and his distinguished colleagues from the "Anything-but-the-Clock-Maker-Tale" camp. I may be Bible-biased, but in the same manner, they are definitely coincidence-biased, and since coincidence has proven to be a rather poor clock-maker in real life, I stick to my conviction that you must be a fool if you persistently refuse to see that fact. What's really nice about Humphreys is that he has the guts to take the Bible literally literal. Even more so than the average creationist, which is already the standard of downright lunacy as far the hounds of the CE Gestapo are concerned. In other words, more literal than I did. While most creationists traditionally contend that the "expansion" Genesis describes as the "firmament" or "heaven" that separated the waters on earth from waters above it that were supposed to have soaked the earth during Noah's flood, the literal description of that expansion would actually make it the stellar universe. I had heard that claim once during the 80s and quickly dismissed it, but Humphreys' argumentation gives me new reasons to have the guts to take the Bible as literally as he does. It turns out that the supposed "knowledge" the CE crew came up with and bombards us with daily has had a stronger impact on all of us than we sometimes realize, even if we know that all that really upholds it is the money poured into it, and even if some of them are honest enough to declare that they are not able to make cosmological models without some admixture of ideology. Some people are just fine without ever finding out how our planet and its neighborhood came into being. I personally am more inclined to be the more curious type, and I'd like to be able to tell people that what my camp has to say on the issue is potentially just as valid as the mainstream, anti-God efforts. So, I'm profoundly grateful to Russell Humphreys for his work, even if it may not be quite the perfect explanation of everything yet, but merely a theory, but we can't even say more than that about some of Einstein's work, either. If one really is bold enough to accept the Bible for what it is and says, it drives home the point that God must be even more awesomely greater than we previously tried to fathom, and also, that size and distance are perfectly irrelevant to Him.

If everything in our physical home world is an illustration of a greater truth concerning the world we don't know (which I strongly believe), then take the atom for example: If the atom's core were the size of a marble, then the radius in which the electrons spin around it would be two miles. According to Humphreys, the vast universe we perceive through our increasingly powerful telescopes is only an expansion within a larger heaven, which the Bible calls "Heaven of heavens," and even that's not yet the end of it, since it also talks about a third heaven. So, as vast as the universe may be, and as tiny as we may be in comparison to the rest of it, it's not our size that matters to God, evidently. He seems to be at least just as concerned about us as some of those scientists are about subatomic particles. Or, as I have put it in the much simpler terms of one of my songs: "He's greater than everything, but small enough to fit inside your heart..." It's probably impossible to figure that out with our current brain capacity, but things still make more sense accepting it.

Let the Dead Bury Their Dead

A lot of people are dying these days, and there have been quite a handful of deaths of people weve known recently. Its almost as if theyre sensing that times are going to be harder, and they want to be spared from having to go through that. Or even, if they werent aware of whats coming, God in His mercy spared them from the worst Having to deal with death brings up certain questions, because it inevitably causes confrontation between the differing attitudes toward death of believers and unbelievers. Those who dont believe in a life after death or in a just God of love Who simply knows best when its time for a person to go, become bitter toward Him (no matter how vehemently they claim not to believe in Him), and they cling to their own (self-)righteousness and oppose those who claim that God is fair and just and knows what Hes doing.

It explains why in the world Jesus could have ever have said something as outrageously politically incorrect as Let the dead bury their dead, and come thou, follow Me. He didnt have anything to do with their rituals and games, nor their temporal little positions of individual power in a temporary little life that culminates in a bunch of people standing and sobbing around a coffin singing Its all over now. He was working for a Cause precisely destined to put an end to that type of game, namely to free people from the fear of death, and to pluck out that sting of death, that seems so threatening, but becomes ridiculous in the Presence of the Son of God Who is the resurrection and the life, and whoever believes in Him will never die. Now, either Jesus was a lunatic for ever having said such a thing, or it was the truth. And if it was the truth, then why do we mourn? Except, of course, for our own momentary loss of that persons physical presence. But if we really believe, then why not act on it and show that we cant be fooled into thinking that this life is all there ever was and will be. Of course, some Christians dont make it exactly easy on others to believe in a life after death, either. They preach eternal insecurity, where youre saved only for so long as you remain a sinless saint, which is probably the most perverted variety of the Christian faith the Devil ever concocted. Because if it were possible to either get or remain saved by our own behavior and actions, then Jesus could have saved Himself His trip to Golgatha and just stayed on His throne, applauding all those incredible heroes of goodness. So, if youre not sure whether your loved ones in Heaven or Hell, go on and mourn about your own insecurity, or get some security by reading the Bible. According to Jesus, if you really believe, you can even determine yourself where that person is going, and the best thing you can do for them is pray, not weep. So, why did Jesus have to say that dreadful thing: "Let the dead bury their dead"? Because people who believe that this life is all there is, and all they ever work for is their momentary position of power and wealth in this temporary life, are as good as dead, as far as the aspects of Eternity - His aspects - are concerned. If you live for the here and now, and it all just culminates in your burial, buddy, then you've been dead all along, and what it should say on your gravestone is "Died at 30, buried at 70." Those who follow and trust the living God, however, are living in the land of the living, and are so convinced of the truth in Jesus' words that "Whosoever lives and believes in Me shall never die," that death is really only a promotion to second grade that shouldn't be mourned but celebrated, no matter how many hellfire-and-brimstone preachers try to make you believe that "Hell's Best Kept Secret" is that Jesus was only kidding when He said that. Other dreadful things Jesus said: Matt.10:34-37, 12:48-50, 18:6

Idolatry in the 21st Century?

One of the apparent differences between what Christianity during the first centuries of its existence had to deal with and the problems it faces in the twenty-first century is that during its beginnings, Christians were surrounded by a large majority of people who sincerely thought that practicing a religion was perfectly legitimately done by offering incense and sacrifices to carved images of what we now call Pagan deities, be it their Greek versions of Zeus, Apollos, Aphrodite, etc., or their Roman or Babylonian counterparts. One of the debates that kept St. Paul and his brethren busy, for example, was whether it was alright to eat food that had been offered to idols, maybe similar to the way we would wonder whether we should allow our teenage son or daughter to attend a rock concert of a questionable act that has been known to promote sodomy or witchcraft... While the carved images of bygone days have long been history, only to be found in museums, I can't help but wonder sometimes whether we really made that hurdle to overcome idolatry the way we may think we did... Christianity wasn't always as enlightened as it is today. When Mohamed came along, he was so disgusted by Christians bowing down to their statues of Mary and the saints, he swore to wipe that bunch of idolaters from the face of the earth. Centuries later Martin Luther felt much like he had to do the same thing, and that Christendom was anything but a compliment to its Founder, but was content to reform the church, instead of starting a revolution. Half a millennium later the majority of practicing Christians seems to have gotten the point that we don't need any visible, carved images of God or any of His earlier followers in order to worship Him, and idolatry finally seems to be a problem of the past. Or at least we got the point that it's pretty dull to worship stuff hewn out of rock. No, we've become a lot more versatile than that. Much more innovative. We figure, we've really got the scoop on the ancient Babylonians, Greeks and Romans, who worshiped sun, moon and stars, or statues of made-up gods and goddesses, and look down on them for being so dumb and Pagan... In a world of talking images remotely controlled by buttons on a magic little tablet in our right, some holy grail filled with Budweiser or our favorite drink in the other, idols have become a lot more sophisticated and entertaining than statues hewn out of rock from a time when that's just what a lot of folks earned

their living with (no wonder they called it the "Stone Age"?). We've got dancing pop stars, athletes, movie demigods and politicians dishing out promises that sound as glorious as the Promises of God Himself; and if we're not into standing on the sidelines of some other sucker's parade, we've got a moving, roaring idol in the garage that we spend our weekends polishing, or some other great achievement and fruit of the sweat of our brow. Of course, then there are the more pious ones among us, who would never attend a Rolling Stones concert, not even care for Taylor Swift, but devote our time to listening to the Christian versions of Pop or Rock music, or attend mass happenings with star preachers pacing from one end of the stage to the other with the same type of headsets we already adored on Madonna or the Jackson offspring, only in this case to chime in the Hallelujahs and Amens from the tens of thousands around us at the event... something we usually don't say when we're at the mall or in school or at work. After all, there is a time and a place for everything, and the time and place to worship the Lord is Sunday mornings, or at that other big organized event, but we don't want to trouble our neighbors with our belief and love for the Lord. It probably wouldn't be the Christian thing to do. In the 21st century. But sometimes - just sometimes, I'm tempted to wonder how Jesus would fit in to one of those mega churches with tens of thousands making all that racket about Him, the Good Shepherd Who left the 99 in the fold in order to find the one lost sheep... Him, Who didn't have a church to attend, only an occasional synagogue or temple He got kicked out of, threatened to be stoned to death by His brethren. Him, Who didn't have a place to lay His head, considering the foxes and birds more blessed in this aspect than Himself. Him, Who urged His followers to forsake all their possessions if they wanted to be His disciples and to become fishers of men. But you don't become a fisher of men by assembling in huge gatherings to sing songs and listen to sermons in order to make yourself feel good. The lost sheep are found on the highways and hedges of this world, and just like Mohamed of old, they're not very impressed by people worshiping their own "Christian" versions of the very same things the world around them worships... They may not be able to tell what the Real Thing is, but they sure know when it ain't. No, we don't worship stony, graven images anymore, Hallelujah! But are we free from idolatry in this, our enlightened 21st century? You tell me!

Age of Temptation

July 1, 2009

They used to say that the hardest words to say in any language were "I'm sorry," and that was certainly true during a time when relationships still played a more significant role in our society, and for a lot of people it may still be so. But from the increasing incapability I'm observing in my fellowmen to hold or conduct a relationship successfully, or, in many cases to even show a glimpse of interest in having one, I'm beginning to suspect that the hardest words in this new age of Temptation, where the acquisition of possessions, position and diversion seem to play a much superior role than other human beings to deal with, perhaps the hardest words to say right now are: "No, thank you!" We figure that we have to take anything that life offers us. After all, coincidence has become our god, along with luck, since our whole existence is based on the theory that we're one lucky shot in an innumerable amount of universes where life happened to find all its necessary ingredients, and so, if luck happens to hand us an opportunity, we tend to grab it without giving the consequences much thought. Maybe it's different in your part of the world, but that's what I'm observing life to be like for much of the younger generation in Germany at the onset of the 21st century. Of course, there are always those who seem to be a bit more mature and responsible than the majority of their peers, but I even observe it with some of us more mature ones, who ought to know better: There seems to be that in-built mechanism in us that makes us tend to accept a tempting offer, rather than to decline, even if whatever it is we're getting to enjoy may not all be that good for us in the long run, or the nature of the opportunity may turn out to be questionable. Prudence has gone down the drain in this, our age, in which a large deal of our supposed enlightenment consists of advertisement. After all, you must be enlightened if you can come up with such sophisticated commercials full of high-tech trickery worth millions of dollars, as we do, just in order to sell other people our goods! Well, I've already shared my thoughts on the difference between advertisement and genuine enlightenment, I think. But it always seem to get back around to it.

We're being offered so many things from so many different sides, we just about accept it our god-given duty to accept at least some of them. That probably shows one difference in strategies between the original advertiser and the Guy he's trying to imitate: the Original Creator. While God's slogan is, "Quality, not quantity" (as in "many are called, but the chosen are few,") His opponent goes by the opposite credo. He figures the more garbage he can dish out, the more of it we're bound to swallow, ruining our taste for quality and rendering whatever discernment we once might have had for what's the real thing and another cheap fake useless once and for all. That's because he's getting ready to present us with the ultimate temptation of all, the greatest fake of all times, his plastic utopia and wonderful new world order, including its new, cashless economic order that all the big shots are crying for right now, with himself at the top, and a system definitely too perfect to be real, and from the looks of it, a lot of people are going to fall for it the way Eve did when he pulled his first stunt 6000 years ago... We may not have evolved, but advertisement and propaganda have, and all for a good reason. We're all being prepared for the hour of temptation, "which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth" (Revelation 3:10), and blessed will be those who have learned to say these hardest of all words, "No, thank you!"

Come On Down!

July 11, 2009

I vehemently defend God. Because I've had to learn the hard way myself that He indeed knows better. Indeed, we deem ourselves extremely sophisticated, highly intellectual and more educated than at any other time before in history. Our television sets are the well functioning proof of it right before our eyes; our computers, cars, airplanes, the achievements of technology... We invest millions in the scientific explanations of how we got here all by ourselves and billions in eradicating the less fortunate specimen that weren't evolving quite rapidly enough to make it up to our economic pinnacle.

Oh, yes, we're smart. So smart. A lot of knowledge. But mostly knowledge that leads to our own personal gain and advantage over others, but never to happiness. Knowledge that may lead to money, but never to happiness. So, if you're satisfied with that, man, go on and have it your way. And if you think you've got to explain God away in order to soothe your conscience and lull it back to sleep and keep it in the daydream and illusion that there is no higher power or mind than your own, well... er... good for you... perhaps. But when it comes to spreading that type of gospel and militantly waging your war in the name of your religion of ego, materialism and greed, then I will vehemently defend my God before anyone to the death. It may make make perfect sense to all those atheist mini-gods that the mind ought to be the only thing worthy of worshiping (intellectual narcism?), but when it comes to their imposing that religion on me and my children and forcing us to bow down to their ugly fake idols, I must vehemently proclaim "No, thanks!" no matter what rewards they may promise me. The rewards of success, because you'll finally have joined the mainstream of the way everybody does it. The reward of acceptance. Of the peace and quiet of finally being left alone because they don't have to convert me anymore to their religion of self. But then, I've been down that road, sort of like the Prodigal Son, and I must honestly say, I'm sick and tired of that pig feed. If you think you must wallow in it, go ahead, but I will refuse, even if I have to crawl all the way Home on my hands and knees. I congratulate all those self-infatuated ego-junkies and wish them a happy marriage with their own mental images of whatever loveliness they perceive themselves to be, but I'd rather have the ugly reality that Someone Else is the Ruler and Holder of my heart. Ultimately, that's what all those apparent "independent" "free-thinkers" will also find out, when the come to the end of the road, for the price of playing god in this life is that the originator of the "Let's play god" game will be in charge of them, and again, the road they have walked will turn out to have given them a sense of pride, self-esteem and some sort of satisfaction of that lust for power, but never happiness. And if you're really honest, all you relentless ego-worshipers, that's what you really hate the most about us who dare to take on a different faith: the fact that we're happy, and you, despite all your feverish efforts and achievements, deep down in your heart know that you're not. It's not that you couldn't be, if you'd let go of that false, plastic image of yourselves that you

worship, and of the pride and arrogance based on all that you may think you know. The difference between the knowledge of good and evil is the definition of even such simple words as "happiness" and "knowledge." The way you define them, they become a hollow shell, just like all the artifacts that prove to you your "divinity:" your buildings, your vehicles, your multimedia gimmicks. In God's dictionary, what you consider "knowledge" would rather spell, "something you may think you know," and that which you call "happiness" is truly misery, for what greater misery is there than fake happiness? But there is such a thing as truth, and the true definition of things, you've just got to come on down and walk on the ground of a Reality that's greater and deeper than what the human mind can concoct and fathom, if you have the guts...

Heaven

July 15, 2009

Probably one of the reasons why not many people take the idea of Heaven as their future Home and destination for the bulk of eternity very seriously is that not an awful lot of information is available abut it, currently. After John the Revelator's astounding two final chapters in the Bible that give us some daring information about the eternal Home of those pilgrims and strangers on earth that the epistle to the Hebrews tells us every true believer should be, so daring in fact that most of those same believers would not dare to take it literally, almost two millennia of silence on the subject have left most Christians keeping their feet on the ground and their minds on earthly matters, rather than looking for that Better Place to come. There were a few lone voices throughout time, some describing supernatural experiences they've had, and artists, inspired by the thought of the unfathomable beauty to come, have tried to visualize what expects the believer in the afterlife. During the 1980s, the founder of the Family International, David Berg, recruited some of the artists within

his movement to try to put on paper his ideas of the world to come, which were generally more daring than the contemporary versions of the Jehovah's Witnesses, Adventists and the likes, but still - though far from the actual perfection that expects us, I'm sure - the more accurate illustrations of Heaven that I personally subscribe to. I cannot imagine the prudish Heaven that so many conservative Christians seem to settle for in their minds, that make our unbelieving friends and acquaintances joke, perhaps not altogether unjustifiably, that "Heaven's okay, but for meeting old friends, there's no place like hell," and similar jokes we've probably all heard... No wonder so many Christians occupy themselves with overwhelmingly earthly matters, and when approached about the idea of Heaven, often react a bit scared, as if they had no intention of going there any time soon. After all, down here is where all the action and fun is... isn't it? Personally, I don't think so. Personally, most of what people consider fun down here, compared to the Real Thing, is probably comparable to the husks that the Prodigal Son stuffed himself with when herding swine for a living, compared with the abundance of food he used to enjoy at his father's table... I actually have a hard time understanding why most of my fellow-believers seem to be so gaga about this world, and don't seem to want to waste a second thought on Heaven. Heaven seems to be okay for old people, or for those who know they're soon going to die, but it hardly seems to be the Goal that most of my brethren have set for their journey, unless they're keeping it a big secret. That's why I'd like to make Heaven a little more palatable and real by whatever humble means available to me for the time being, most of which are restricted to words, for now, since I'm not a gifted artist, nor a wealthy film-producer, rendering my own personal version of "Heaven Can Wait" or "Made In Heaven" or similar previous attempts to give us a glimpse of the bright side of the afterlife. Of course, there's that other place, too, but others have taken it upon themselves to scare us into Heaven by scaring the hell out of us with their tales of Hell, so, I'd rather keep on the sunny side of things for now. After all, it seems there is more preaching about Hell than Heaven. If we can't make Heaven sound desirable enough for people to want to go there, I guess all we've got left is the attempt to scare them with stories about the other place that will make them not want to go there. But I'd like to create a vision of Heaven that varies a little from the vague, conservative and prudish version that seems to fail so utterly to incite anyone's interest and desire to ever want to go there. Let's face it, our generation, and probably even more so the one after us, is probably the biggest bunch of hedonists and fun-junkies to ever have walked this globe, and I can only assume that the Devil is pulling out all his big guns and best "Pleasure Island" features he can in order to make God look like the loser at least in the minds of those who don't know any better and have never had a taste of Heaven, nor a glimpse of what Heaven is really like. For starters, let's begin with a statement that most people will probably find shocking. If there's one attribute that Heaven has not been described as to the degree that in my opinion it should have, apart from all the usual ones, such as "wonderful," beautiful," etc, it would be sexy. Not in any nasty, dirty, sinful or pornographic way, much less associated to any sort of the manifold perversions that have attached themselves to the entire theme of sex these days, but nonetheless, indescribably, sincerely, purely and authentically sexy. If this begins to bust your former concepts of Heaven, then I'm succeeding, although I admit, it must probably be hard for you to fight the fear that I'm trying to lead you up some wicked, sinful path here,

because we've all been drilled to the point of insanity that sex and sin are practically one and the same thing, which I have dared to challenge formerly, as did the aforementioned David Berg... If God's first commandment ever uttered to man was not "Thou shalt be good," or "Pray and be holy," but "Be fruitful and multiply," in other words, "make love," and there was nothing whatsoever wrong with nudity until the serpent made its debut in paradise to introduce his advertisement for his idea of "fun," then we must assume that God is not prudish, but indeed, - and I'm perfectly aware of how many people will hate me for saying this - a sexy God. And His Habitat will look accordingly, quite different from the usual Jehovah's Witnesses' portrayals of people roaming Heaven clad in 20th century business apparel. I'm not saying that all people ever do in Heaven is have sex, although I would boldly defend the statement - contrary to some - that what they won't do is never have any, but to say the least, interaction between the sexes in Heaven is infinitely more pleasant than it is currently down here, with all the usual misunderstandings and misconceptions about each other gone for good. Jesus said that nothing is hid that shall not be revealed, and I believe there is total openness and honesty in Heaven with no need to cover up and nothing to hide. Probably also retrospectively, and in regard to incidents of the past. It's my personal conviction that our current history from Eden to Armageddon will serve as invaluable source of education for future citizens of God's Kingdom, and not only will we be able to explore Napoleon and Mussolini's moments of glory or lack thereof, but perhaps we might even gain a little more insight into some of the more intricate, perhaps even delicate bits of notso-well-know history, according to each one's personal scope of interest. Some, for instance, might get a real kick and inspiration out of re-living the scene of Janet Soskice's conversion under the shower as a philosophy student in the 70s in 3D, with the esteemed philosopher's consent, naturally... Or to view on Heaven-TV what it was like for the first, most perfect (and not ape-like at all) couple in Eden, before Satan convinced them that it certainly would be more appropriate to wear clothes... But "sexy" isn't the only unusual attribute I'd give Heaven, that would make the future citizens of Hell turn red with envy - especially since the boss in that place doesn't seem to be fond of God's original commandment, at all, and many who are looking forward to a party in hell will probably experience the disappointment of their (after-)lives. "Adventurous" is another one that probably wouldn't fit many people's current concept of God's Capital. But that's probably because God Himself is only reduced to the few fractions of imagination and knowledge they have about Him based on the meager interest they have shown Him throughout their busy lives. Maybe some just want to be surprised, as I'm sure they will. Anything we enjoy on earth is merely a shadow and a poor counterfeit version of the Real Thing waiting for believers There. "Treckies" will probably finally be able to experience the Real Thing and explore the galaxies that the Creator certainly did not only create to leave us all puzzled... After all, the first description of a U.F.O. or "space ship" in history is found in the Old Testament's book of Ezekiel... And, of course, man's oldest dream, that he has finally learned to realize during the last century, of flying, is finally enjoyed without any technical and costly gimmicks nor any risks involved. After all, we have this much solid information from John: "There shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying,

neither shall there be any more pain" (Rev.21:4), which already sounds like all the reasons in the world I need for wanting to go there, since I was never the masochistic, melancholic nor death-loving type. Another tidbit about our Future Home from St. John is the promise that we'll be like Jesus - in other words, perfect, and that will be quite a welcome change, indeed, from the "perfection" we've enjoyed so far... But if God is only twice as merciful as some of the fire and brimstone preachers portray Him - perhaps for fear that there won't be room enough for them in Heaven if they'd let too many people in - we might even meet some old sinners like ourselves who made it there by His grace, and in spite of their earthly imperfections, and among them many of the famous people whose work we appreciated during our lifetime, not to mention all the really greats that we never even heard of that will blow our minds. And there won't just be tons of cool - or rather, hot people - but also angels and other heavenly beings that the Bible describes here and there... Those who love sports will probably be able to enjoy a large new variety of acrobatics possible with their new immortal bodies... The philosophically inclined will be able to benefit from a wealth of resources unfathomable by our earthly standards... Just a few ideas to whet your appetite and make you reconsider if you thought that Heaven was going to be boring. As one of the prettiest women alive once said, "Only idiots get bored," and I'm just about 100% certain that there won't be anymore of those in that wonderful Tomorrow...

Inflation of Life

July 21, 2009

A life isn't worth much these days. A Muslim life, that is. I, as a Christian, may - and perhaps must- say that. While the stabbing to death of a pregnant Egyptian woman in a German courtroom by one of the millions of Stalin's souvenirs that are waiting to let loose their version of "Helter Skelter" on the European population evoked a minuscule fraction of coverage in the German press that a Jewish or "Christian," or simply non-Muslim victim would have eked out, American war heroes make a sport of bombing Afghan weddings and paying relatives of the victims 2000 bucks for each victimized child, the "most moral army" in the world seated in the Promised Land explains to the world why it's totally legitimate to kill Palestinian civilians in order not to risk the life of an Israeli soldier. Relatives of American victims of war receive a fifty-fold sum of what Afghan (or Pakistani) relatives of victims are paid off with, by the way.

Slavery may have been abolished (although I seriously doubt it when I watch the masses trot to their working places and back every day), but the value system of human life is till intact. On the slave market of the 21st century, the price tag on an American reads "100.000$ (delivered in oak)." An Afghan or Pakistani child: "2000$ (plighwood)." An Egyptian woman and her unborn child: "3 lines on page 5." A homosexual American pop star and child abuser: Front page coverage and more pages and pages on every Western tabloid, magazine and online news service for weeks in a row. An Israeli soldier: "1000 Palestinean pairs of eyes and sets of teeth, just to make sure one of ours won't lose his." Ah, it's great to live in such an enlightened, modern and democratic society, isn't it? It makes my chest swell with pride, the way we proclaim freedom from shore to shore in our own special, little, Western way. After all, it must be pride, or simply unfathomable arrogance that enables so-called "evolved" human beings with half a brain to come up with such an intricate system of values. It's true, I have my own issues with Muslims. Since they have become the epitome of "Terror" under the Bush administration (or was any non-Muslim ever attacked during that glorious "War on Terror?") they've had to go on the defensive. They've started reading the Koran in order to find out what they're being haunted for, and unlike the hundreds of thousands of lukewarm Christians lulling themselves to sleep on their pews, they have some fire and devotion for their religion. That is, of course, very bothersome and aggravating for our society of pew warmers. I would also prefer to see them all converted to my own Christian faith, (although I'd hate to see another billion of pew warmers, to be honest). But at the current rate, I'm afraid our method of enlightenment isn't cutting the cake. In fact, if I were a Muslim, I wouldn't trust a Christian any further than I could throw my 40 year old pick up truck, not to mention members of other Western "enlightened" religions currently on the market. I guess if you would fall into my country, kill a million of my people, and then hold a gun to my head and say, "Join our wonderful, enlightened Western society that is bringing freedom and democracy to your country and your whole bunch of backward pagans," I would reply, "In the name of Allah, shoot!" But that's just me. The millions around me in my country couldn't care less about what's going on around them, much less in a far away desert or even in a Berlin courtroom. Maybe that's why I don't really feel at home in this world, nor am able to eke out the remotest resemblance of patriotic feelings for the life of me. Which is why my own life probably isn't worth a dime, either, according to the current slave market rates. I've never been a very good slave, I admit. At least not to Mammon. But thus is the inflation of life... None of us knows what they'll be worth tomorrow, or how much they'll be willing to pay for us next year. I suppose what really matters is not to be found wanting when God pulls out the scales to measure what our life was really worth, according to His standard, not ours...

Dear Martians!
July 25, 2009

Dear Martians, errr... Aliens... Hail... whatever. Greetings from us earthlings, yes, the people on planet earth. We've been looking for signs of your existence for decades and are seeking contact with you, and I just wanted to send you this message, in case you're out there, because I want at least someone to be honest with you and let you know that we may not be just as wonderful as we portray ourselves to be. You see, I find it a bit hypocritical of us to be seeking contact with you, some possibly existing higher intelligence & more developed or "evolved" species, and pretend how nice we are, when communications are pretty lousy here, among ourselves. Our favorite means of communications, and the one we invest most of our resources in, in fact, what we call the best and most "booming business", is weapons. It all started with clubs and sticks thousands of years ago, then swords and catapults to hurl rocks at each other's castles, but we've become way more sophisticated in our modern means of "communications" since then. Nowadays, if we don't like someone, or say, a whole country, we don't even have to go there ourselves anymore to eliminate them, but we can send them our greetings and messages via remote controled drones (small airplanes, which are like toy versions of your space ships). The "message" usually consists of some bombs or missiles that are being shot at "suspicious" gatherings of people, such as weddings (a human mating ritual), etc. The leaders of our nations then pay 2000 Dollars for every child they sent their greetings to, which basically says, "Be removed from this earth" to their relatives, the ones who didn't get a message yet. Dollars are pieces of paper with numbers on. They are our second favorite means of communication. We give them to each other in exchange for things, like weapons (our favorite means of communication as I explained earlier), food, houses, cars (a primitive means of transportation), but also airplanes, TVs (a one-way communication device our leaders use to keep us happy and tranquilized), along with things that will makes us stay happy and content, like alcohol and drugs, or even physical affection from other humans. Of course, we also have other means of communication that we use for exchange of words, but usually they're not really used to communicate anything essential or important, just to keep us busy chatting and ignoring certain things, like the decreasing value of our dollars, or the wedding message drones, or the fact that we only sell food to special people. The others have to die a slow, cruel death of starvation, even though there would be plenty of dollars to feed them. But the people with all the dollars and wedding message drones think that if we feed them, there won't be enough left for themselves.

So, dear aliens, this is just to let you know that I don't think that our planet earth would be a very safe place for you to come right now. If we're already being this mean to each other, you can only imagine what we might do to you, unless, of course, you would turn out to be way stronger than us... If we should have aroused your curiosity, though, maybe you could pay us a visit in secret, and we can tell you some more about our strange race. I also have a few pretty cool friends who wouldn't turn you in or sell you over to the weapons and dollars people. There once used to live a Man on our planet Who was quite different from the way most people are today, and instead of messages that said "Be removed from this earth," He gave a message of love, and allowed Himself to be removed for us. His name was Jesus. He said He would come back some day to pick us all up to a better Home, a City in the sky that's quite big. Anyway, maybe you can come visit us when Jesus is back, in our new heavenly Home, and when the earth will be all cleaned up from weapons and dollars and stuff, and there will be no more wedding drone messages, and all the people will be given enough food. In the meantime, I wish you all the best in your endeavor of exploring the more primitive species in the universe like us, and hope for all of us that Jesus is going to come back soon so that we're going to be a nicer people to meet, when you'll finally get to know us. "God bless you," as some people say down here, that means, may the Creator of the universe be good to you, and may He keep you from bad people and wedding message drones, dollars and starvation. Hope to see you soon. Sincerely, yours, Dave

The Proper Way?

I believe that one of the main lessons mankind will learn from history (unfortunately most likely in retrospect) is that they underestimated the extent to which they're being manipulated by God's Enemy. People usually tend to overestimate their own capacities and wisdom, and thus we fail to recognize early enough how easily we're allowing ourselves to be fooled by the Devil. One favorite device of the enemy of our souls is that he likes to trick us into seeing things differently than God does. For example, in God's eyes it was perfectly alright for Adam and Eve to be walking around stark naked in the Garden of Eden. Along came Lucy with his old attitude of, "I'll show'em the way thing ought to be run around this place" and changed their minds about that, to the extent that they even figured it would make sense to hide from God... If we're really kidding ourselves into thinking we have "evolved" into something brighter during the past 6000 years since that event, it just goes to show another classic example of what's stated above. Take for example the way we view different life-styles than our own, established, Western, widely recognized status quo, like that of polygamist faith communities such as the Fundamental Latter Day Saints who made headlines a while ago, or - much closer to my own home: the life-style of the Family International. The general image that is being conveyed about the life-style of such faith communities is so odd, so grossly different from the average, that one can't help but look down on "such people" with a frown, patting themselves on the shoulder for doing things "the proper way." One quote I specially like from the Family's founder David Berg is from his epistle, "Did God Make a Mistake?" - "To hell with the proper way!" (Of course, how well a radical non-conformist and iconoclast like Berg would be received in today's version of the movement he began, is another question, but I suppose it's one of those mysteries in history how it seems to be reserved for some that membership of the outfit they birthed would have been possible exclusively as its founder...) The problem with what we call the "proper way," the way that the vast majority has chosen, the great and wide broadway we trot down once we have chosen to enter in through the wide gate

our leaders train us to pursue, is that it may seem right to us, but the end of it spells out death and destruction for millions of victims who happened to stand in our way, be it the "Amerikan Way," the "American Dream" or the "Western life-style" or simply the way we think it ought to be done. The question is, how does God see things? And what will the history books of the future say about those who followed the "Fhrer" down the "proper way," as opposed to the strange little sects that dared to buck the tide? And where will you have stood? Will you have been one of the collaborators that will largely have to be ashamed of their conduct ("We simply followed orders") or will you be proud to have been one of the few that supported the Resistance? Perhaps the citizens of the final World Empire, namely God's Kingdom, will find out to their shock and awe that those weird communal life-styles of those weird sects and cults we all looked and frowned upon and thanked God every day that we weren't like them, turns out to be much closer to the way God had actually intended for people to live than the "each his own," "dog eat dog" life-style that we've come to consider "normal" in our pseudo-enlightened modern society... I was just talking to another "veteran from the 80s" last night, about how different things were back then. Nowadays, hardly any young folks move into communes anymore, because they're so used to having their own quarters with their own TV and their privacy, they're simply not capable of living socially anymore, the way people had to or simply chose to less than 3 decades ago. Maybe it's still different in your part of the world, but the trend, generally, is downhill, as far as "social" goes. People who live in communes are weird, period. Is the new consensus. "It's wicked to be naked." Does something ring a bell?

Not of this World

There is a fine but clear distinction between what the New Testament refers to as the world in some places, such as John 3:16 (For God so loved the World etc.), and in others, such as John 15:19, 1John 2:15-17 and James 4:4. The first refers to humanity at large, and we are told that God loves it. The second refers to what some people like to call the System, the establishment, or some movie freaks like myself as the Matrix, and we are told not to love it, or else we may become Gods enemy! What most Christians seem to refer to as the World in that second sense, is non-believers. A favorite group to be included in that category these days are Muslims, for example. Strangely enough, not the Jews, even if for the sole reason that their Holy Book makes up the first two thirds of the Christian Bible. Some atheists are also included in that group of the common Christian concept of the World, (if a believer is willing to admit that Jesus, James and John must have referred so any sort of people at all in those above mentioned Scriptures), although in the case of Christians in the U.S. this doesnt apply to American atheists. Jews and Americans enjoy a special status and are somehow exempt from the mystery group of people that might possibly constitute the World that Jesus and His disciples admonished us to stay away from. However, taking a closer look at Jesus life and the Early Church history, we may discover quite a different picture than that common concept of them Hottentots down yonder as referring to the world. If we take that dusty Bible off the shelf and actually start reading the Gospels instead of settling for that weekly sermon with a few Bible verses tossed in, we begin to see that the sort of people Jesus was actually having the most trouble with were not the Romans (pagans and foreigners), but the religious community of His own people! Gulp! He said to His disciples, He that receives you, receives Me, and he that receives Me receives Him that sent Me.

In other words, those He referred to in John 15:19 must have included or consisted of those who received Him not. Was Jesus in fact referring to the religious establishment among others? Folks living in our own country, that we adore every night on TV? Could it be possible that they might be part of the world that His true disciples are not supposed to be part of? After all, its hardly a temptation to fall head over heels for the Hottentots we have nothing in common with. It must have been tough for Jesus and His disciples to be rejected by the very ones they were supposed to have the most in common with (same God, same religion, same background and culture, and yet worlds apart). It was still tough for them half a century later when Christians were banned from any synagogue in the world. And that was before Paul got soft and gave it one last shot at converting his own chosen people, & went back to Jerusalem against the explicit warning from the Lord that this was going to be his death, and it was, eventually. So, perhaps Jesus wasnt talking about the Hottentots and pagans, after all, when He was talking about the World. (But maybe theyre included in the World that God loves, in John 3:16, and were supposed to love them likewise?) The World that neither Jesus nor His true followers have never been a part of is the large majority of those who will simply always, throughout history refuse to receive those whom He has truly sent. It may be hard to recognize His true disciples sometimes, because they may have broken some of the establishments rules, similar to the way Jesus and His original disciples did in disrespecting the Sabbath and associating with prostitutes and other outcasts. They will even make mistakes and commit sins, the way Gods people have throughout history, since claims of infallibility are reserved for the untouchables and merchants of forgiveness of the established false religionists, and the world will come out to point their fingers at them, only to find themselves poking their finger right in Gods eye, and hear Him repeat, He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone! Maybe what Jesus referred to as the World isnt defined as much by anyones religion, as ones reception of His true emissaries and ambassadors. As far as I can see, the established religious System still rejects, refuses and even persecutes the true disciples of Christ just as they have always done. I guess its something difficult to relate to unless one has made that type of experience himself.

Days of Cairos

Obviously, creationists don't believe in macroevolution, the process that is supposed to have created every single species from one little cell, and less than that, primordial soup, with nothing as its aid but billions of years. There is, however, something about micro evolution, the process by which are derived the manifold variations of a species or kind, such as we find in horses, cats or dogs, etc., that give us a clue about the process or development of creation, namely that changes and adaptations in the matrix of creation do take place, such as the change from herbivorous pre-flood animals into carnivorous ones, equipped with the claws and fangs to become hunters, instead of the peaceable vegetarians they once used to be, according to the Bible. I'm speculating that another, perhaps invisible but nonetheless tangible change took place in creation, presumably during the moment of the Fall of Man, when Adam and Eve changed pretty much everything through their introduction of (the knowledge of good and) evil into the world, as I have expounded on repeatedly. It's really only a speculation and a guess, but at least I'm democratic enough about it not to insist on teaching it to your kids every morning in school, and on every single nature documentary they'll ever watch, unlike the colleagues from the evolution department... My guess is that something happened to time on that eventful day when the first human couple chose to disobey God. For one thing, there is no physical means to define a "day" during the first days of creation, since the dry land only appeared on Day Three, the stars (including the sun that our planet supposedly revolves around) on Day Four, and unless we assume that God simply called a "day" one revolution of the empty and dark void that the earth represented in its rough, watery stages around some fictive axis, there isn't much else to go by. It's not really hewn in rock that one day must have consisted of the same 24 hours back then that it does today. If Prof. Dr. Werner Gitt from Braunschweig, Germany is correct and there are really two different types of time, namely Chronos, our current time frame, and Cairos, the eternal "time" scope of God (the kind where one day is like a thousand years and thousand years like one day), then it might explain how Adam accomplished naming all the animals on Day 6 and still came up with the necessary energy for the first date in history, presuming that his clock or schedule was still tuned to Cairos, and Chronos, which will come to an end at the time of the Second Coming of Christ, by the way, was only installed after the fateful bite from the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil...

If you're one of the 99.9% of the world's population who couldn't care less about these things, never mind; it's not as if such matters were as vital to your information as algebra, Latin or Nintendo, but it might be interesting to know that not only there once was a time without stress and anxiety, but we're also going toward a new, in fact, eternal period of Cairos, the timescape of God's eternal Now. You may not have time right now to occupy your mind with such trivial matters, but you will then. Plenty.

Zeitgeist Refuted

I've already written some things before on the topic of why people like the makers of the "Zeitgeist" movie are off about throwing Jesus into one pot with all the ancient religions and depicting Christianity or religion per se as one of the great evils the Illuminati are using to enslave mankind. What they don't realize is that all the ancient religions and mythologies of the Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Greeks and Romans were largely based on Astrology, and what the stars were telling them since the beginning of time, and that was a message that clearly pointed to a Savior Who was to come. The difference is, while the ancient religions only picked up on that story told in the stars, it actually happened and was fulfilled in Jesus. Perhaps that's what John meant when he said wrote, "Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God" (1John 4:2). All the other religions worshiped similar deities, based on the information they had gotten from the stars (see Psalm 19), but Jesus made the difference by putting flesh to that story. I can only urge believers to overcome their fright of astrology and buy themselves the book "The Heavens Declare the Glory of God," which explains how the Gospel was truly written in the stars in every perceivable language, long before it was fulfilled in Jesus, which would give them much greater understanding of the origins of the Pagan religions that were only foreshadowing the story of Jesus, which again would help them to debunk all the countless Zeitgeist disciples on the Internet claiming they know something because they've seen "Zeitgeist." The Devil never gives you any truth without getting you to swallow a big lie along with it, and while the information in Zeitgeist about the NWO hierarchy may be accurate, the makers' stance on religion is totally off because they're ignorant of this one simple fact.

Of course, it doesn't exactly help that Christians are so scared stiff of astrology that they don't even want to hear what their own book has to say about it. It doesn't help either, that they're still killing their enemies by the millions, instead of loving them, as Jesus told them to. But one wrong doesn't make another right, and one lie doesn't make another one right, either. Christians may be off on a lot of things, including who the good guys and the bad guys are in the Mideast (which doesn't exactly help the on-looking seeker, either, to find out what on earth is the truth), but so are the Zeitgeist makers, and in their case, it seems as if their mind is simply made up with a theory that comes in very hand for all the millions of people who don't really welcome the idea of having to deal with the Presence of an Almighty Creator in their conscience, either, along with the Evolution hogwash. They may know that there are culprits who want to enslave them, but at the same time they let the same culprits fool them into believing that the only Guy Who could ever save them out of this mess was a fraud that they cooked up... People always underestimate the Enemy of their souls, and the extent to which he can lie the blue out of the sky and make up stories just in order to fool and confuse us. Now, how do I know that the Devil is such a talented liar? From Jesus. See, contrary to the gruesome Zeitgeist fairy-tale of "there is no good whatsoever, except perhaps in ourselves, and nothing and no one is going to come and save us," there IS a God, and He loves us, and there IS a Way, a Truth and a Life apart from the Matrix the Devil has been cooking up for us. All you need is to want that Way Out. P.S.: Upon closer inspection of Zeitgeist and the ideology behind it, with the aid of the fairly good answer to it, "Zeitgeist Refuted," it turns out that its makers appear to be less than just innocently erratic, but actually from the camp of the "enlightened ones" themselves, trying to turn up their blinding light a bit more in order to stop anyone from seeing anything, much less the truth, even if they had to admit to a few facts about themselves that are already widely known and available on the web, anyway... It all goes back to making Christianity the culprit, and Jesus and His followers the bad guys and conspirators, one of the oldest tricks of the Devil, accusing his enemies of his own crimes... Which is also something Keith Truth says in his video exposing the New Age movement. One thing about the Christian Zeitgeist debunkers, though: they shouldnt be too early to dismiss the comparisons between Christ and the sun, since God evidently created certain physical things to illustrate spiritual truths (a point I'm trying to make in my eBook project "The Deeper Meaning of Everything"). There are many Scriptures that would back up that comparison, about the Lord God being a "Sun and shield," and "Unto you that fear My name, shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in its wings." There is nothing wrong with the sun, or its representing to an extent what God is like to us. Of course, a whole different story is worshiping the creation rather than the Creator... Why not just enjoy the creation and thank our Creator for it? If we as Christians had done that, allowing our fellow-humans to do the same, a whole lot less people might be upset at us and bent on destroying Christianity altogether... Besides that, the Antichrist has got to come as predicted and wage his war on the saints, and Christians ought to get ready for it, instead of always being scared of the truth... Related Links: http://forum.conspiracycentral.net/lofiversion/index.php/t24047.html http://www.nicenetruth.com/home/2008/10/my-critique-of.html http://www.savethemales.ca/zeitgeist_movie_illuminati_exp.html

The Spirit of Antichrist

I used to read that passage about "the spirit of antichrist" in 1John and wonder, "Hmm, doesn't make much sense to me. Who would in their right minds dispute that Jesus was actually a historical figure, and that He lived as a real man of flesh and blood?" Well evidently there ARE people who do, and they're actively working on spreading their doctrine and spirit of antichrist, which they term "Zeitgeist," the spirit of our time. Well, as opponents of the spirit of antichrist and militant adherents to the Spirit of God, we're supposed to resist and fight that move and counter their flood of lies with the truth. I'm afraid, though, that the usual attempts of denying the similarities between Jesus and the pagan deities, which apparently give the zeitgeist or antichrist movement its momentum won't do. Christians will have to pull themselves together and realize once and for all that God is stronger than the Devil and face their ridiculous fear of astrology and the stars, as if it had been Satan who put them in the sky to tease Christians with them: "Don't get too close, or they'll bite you!" If we're going to combat the spirit of antichrist in the zeitgeist movement efficiently, we're going to have to face the fact that it was God, not the Devil, Who created the stars, and created them for a purpose. We're going to have to face the fact, that it was also God Who created the star signs, and that the word "zodiac" is not evil or witchcraft, but actually originally appears in its Hebrew form, "Mazzaroth," in the Bible, namely in the book of Job, and means nothing else than "the path." Furthermore can we not deny the fact that God created certain things in the physical in order to illustrate spiritual truths, and the sun and its relation to the stars are one of them. Sexual intercourse, by the way, is another one of them, and not the epitome of evil, as some Christians still seem to believe. We have to realize that our God is not a wimp who created all these things in order for us to let the Devil run off with them and rake in all the credit for them. I've even read websites of Christians who teach that candles are evil. Well, what are you going to do when the lights go off in New York for the last time, brother? Sit in darkness because you're scared to light a candle? Of course, these people are scared stiff of any kind of symbolism, whether it be to depict Jesus as a lion, as in the movie "The Lion, the With and the Wardrobe," and the star signs? Oh my God, they must have crept right outta hell. When in reality, nothing could be further from the truth, and if they'd just read their own Book, they'd find out. Just because there are a few Scriptures in which it warns of the pagan astrologers and soothsayers, or the sort of people who are trying to figure out if you're going to be lucky at the races tomorrow by your horoscope doesn't mean we should throw the baby out with the bath water. Of course, I'm not as naive to believe that I'm going to change that sort of people's minds. But there may be others for whom there is hope, and who manage to ignore the "Thou shalt be scared stiff" dogma drilled into them for long enough to recognize God as the Big Thing in and around it all, the One Who created it all for His glory, and then develop the guts to grab what was rightfully ours to begin with and knock the Devil and his slimy cohorts for a lop with it.

We're not too scared to kill of innocent Muslims by the millions, but when it comes to facing our real foe, all of a sudden we're not that brave anymore, are we? Well, it's always easier to hate and kill a foe far away in a foreign country that you didn't know much about and you never cared for much in the first place, than facing that treacherous foe who talks and looks like you right in your own country, waving the same flag, only that the stuff he's saying is going to be the New World Order credo of tomorrow, and while we ignore and even sympathize with those friendly attempts of these traitors to poison us with their doctrine, destroying the faith of millions around us, we consentingly keep paying our taxes in order for more Muslims to be killed. At least the Muslims believe that Jesus was a real person, and they even believe that He's going to come back. But that's not what's going to be taught in the public schools of tomorrow, if tomorrow isn't already today. It's definitely not what kids are being taught via the tube in our oh-so "Christian" nations, nor the books we buy them by the dozens. As long as they don't talk about star signs, they must be okay... Get real! This is another aspect that Christians have been totally deceived about: next to the dogmas that sex is sin, war is okay, God blesses the rich, God stopped talking 2000 years ago and Jesus will come back before the Great Tribulation, here's another one: Star signs are of the Devil! And it turns out there is a good reason why the Devil wants you to believe that! Because if you wouldn't, he wouldn't have a chance to make people believe that Jesus never lived as an actual person, because you'd know that all those similarities between Him and all those ancient pagan "deities" are only because the deities were based on what the ancients had read in the stars! I can only assume that one principal reason so many Christians don't want to know better about these things is because if they'd have to admit that God is actually in all those aspects of life that they'd prefer to exclude Him from, it would mean they'd have to let Him play a far more significant role in their lives than they presently are willing to allow Him. So many things are actually not the Devil's fault, but ours, because we let him. If the spirit of antichrist takes over the world, then it's probably going to be just because too many Christians were plain too scared of the truth. Did you know that fear is a sin? God commands us several hundred times throughout the Bible not to be afraid, but to trust in Him. So, if we're not supposed to fear the Devil himself, nor our enemies, then how much less should we be scared of parts of God's creation that He would actually like us to use for His glory?

The Devils Motto: World Conquest Through Stupidity

September 1, 2009 A few years ago I bought a second hand edition of Widerstand und Ergebung, a book Dietrich Bonhoeffer, (a Christian minister during the 3rd Reich in Germany who was part of the Resistance and was sentenced to death by Hilter himself a few weeks before the war ended), consisting of letters he wrote in prison, where he was awaiting his execution. I soon came upon the statement, Stupidity is a greater threat to good than evil itself. That struck me as something strange for a Christian to say. After all, arent we all supposed be nice and politically correct with each other and our fellowman? But the more I live to see and learn in this world, the more I realize just how right he was. Obviously, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was referring to the way the majority of the German people unquestioningly obeyed orders and tolerated and collaborated with what became known as some of the grossest atrocities in history. Unfortunately, due to the often cited fact that we never learn from history, history also has a tendency to keep repeating itself. Apart from the ever increasing deliberate dumbing down of not only America, but pretty much also the rest of the so-called illuminated world Ive addressed repeatedly, Im just saying: Galileo. What in the world did the church (as in Christendom) ever learn from that episode of having to apologize centuries later for having been so dumb? Apparently exactly the same amount that we always learn from such incidents. Exactly.

Nothing. Its not that knowledge or wisdom wouldnt be available. In fact, theyre both in the list of the 9 gifts of the Holy Spirit (gifts as in, available for the asking), which Christendom at large has determined were only for those of Gods children who happened to live during the first century. Perhaps St. James was also exclusively addressing first century believers when he wrote that if anyone should lack wisdom, they should ask God for it. But then, if God is supposed to have stopped talking altogether around that same time, I guess its easiest to just repeat and believe and know whatever were being told to accept. If knowledge and wisdom (along with 7 other pretty useful gifts) are weapons that God has equipped us with in our battle against evil, Im afraid were losing the war because the vast majority of Christian soldiers dont even know that they exist, much less know how to use them. (Coming to think of it, most of them arent even aware that theres a war going on, much less fighting for the right side). So, were just standing by and watch as the Devil, along with his spirit of antichrist (aka Zeitgeist) conquers the world by telling them that Jesus was nothing but a myth, largely because we fail to arm ourselves with sufficient knowledge that could easily debunk such diabolical claims. But then, most Christians also believe their preachers fairy-tales that theyre going to be whisked out of this world before any of that evil stuff might ever happen, so why put unnecessary strain on the brain when we still need that thing to enjoy the football game? The only problem is that the Bible itself predicts that the Antichrist will wage war on the saints (no, not the Jews, since they refused the deal that would have them sanctified), and is already marshaling his forces, so, how is that going to happen if all the saints have gone marchin in already? Im afraid there are just too many things Christians dont want to know. Ignorance is bliss is the current motto of the game, So stick me back in the Matrix and give me my steak to enjoy and let me forget all about this dreadful thing here called reality! Unfortunately, that attitude just about drives home perfectly the point of how right on Bonhoeffer was in the above statement. The history books of a future under Gods reign may one day prompt their teachers to ask their students, What was the most effective weapon Satan used in order to establish his kingdom on earth before the Lords Return? And the unanimous, though chilling answer will be chorusing, Stupidity!!! On which side of this war of stupidity against mankind do you stand?

Dont Underestimate Your Enemy! (Or: How the Saints Lost the War Against Antichrist and Were Overcome)

September 15, 2009 The first lie we let our enemy tell us was that he didnt even exist. Then we allowed him to make us believe that we were really smart, while ever so subtly dumbing us down via loads of invalid information. We underestimated the deadliest weapon he ever used against mankind: stupidity. He hurled at us an irresistible flood of distractions that kept us entertained and busy thinking about anything but the Cause and Purpose for which God had put us here, in fact, he kept us busy most of the time doing anything but think at all His representatives posed as the type of people we looked up to: the successful, the strong, the powerful. We trusted them even when all they did was lie to us. We underestimated the lengths to which our enemy would go in order to deceive us. We underestimated his skill at that which he does best: tell lies. We believed the evidence our scientists had come up with to prove that we all were mere results of billions of years of Evolution, to the point that we ridiculed anyone who held on to the original account of Creation, thus strongly limiting the credibility and authority of the tome of instructions the Creator had left us since the days of old, allowing the gap between ourselves and Him to widen with each of those billions of years. We truly thought the majority must be right; that so many people could not be wrong about the same thing ignoring the advice of the One who came to save us and bring us truth, that we should not follow the way the majority chooses. We listened to our enemies propaganda and gospel of material gain that not only seemed to justify our selfish life-style and allowing tens of thousands to starve to death each day in the face of our opulence, but also let them trick us into killing millions of innocents whom they labeled terrorists, when in the end they really turned out to be our allies in the Holy War for the one true God.

We believed the Enemy and his emissaries when they told us that we did not need a Savior but that we could save ourselves, only to find out that this was the most bitter and poisonous of all their lies yet. He came in peaceably and with flatteries, by his false peace destroying many. From the beginning he had us believe that there was no such thing as a (spiritual) war going on, and that he was going to be friendly, until he turned around, broke the covenant of peace, and fell upon us like a ravenous lion. We stood idly by, as his ministers of propaganda and priests of the New World Ideology explained to the world that our Savior was only a myth, one among many others, and that the usurper was the true Christ or Messiah that was to come; and because he had brought peace and prosperity when the world was in chaos, many of us believed him. And, of course, if we, who should have know better, fell prey to their lies, how much more readily did the vast unbelieving majority swallow their delusion. When they were told that it was religious people like us who were to blame for all the crises in the world, and that we were the culprits and terrorists, they readily joined the man-hunt and persecution of unprecedented scale that ensued. We allowed the Enemy of our souls to fool us; and accordingly, he overcame us. The battle was lost, and the whole war would have been lost, had it not been for Him, Who had been destined to be Victor over all from before the beginning of time, and Who, upon His return, put an end to the schemings of the deceiver with but one breath from His lips. Not only did He save us from our deserved punishment for giving in to the Deceiver time and time again, but He also saved the world from the destruction that had been in the Enemys heart to unleash upon the earth from the beginning. None of us can say, Our own arm has saved us. Only the grace and mercy of our Creator was great enough to accomplish that. To Him be all glory and praise forever.

Once Upon a Time There Was Respect

A Prototype of the "New Master Race" and a Recent Victim (R.I.P.!)

September 18, 2009 Its pretty much an open secret that the so-called terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center buildings in New York on September 11, 2001, were staged for various reasons, ranging from economical to political. One of the primary points on the agenda of the New World Order architects sitting on the Council on Foreign Relations, is to get rid of cultures that still have well-functioning family structures. If you dont believe me that the powers behind the scenes have been working on destroying families on a massive scale for decades, read up about it on Henry Makows websites. Just as dumb people are much easier to manipulate than smart people (or even better: dumb people who think theyre smart because their brains are stuffed with a bunch of invalid information), which is the reason why the Western public school system is such an outrageous mess, and the slime spewed out from the media such increasingly intolerable garbage, broken families are easier to manipulate than intact ones. Divide and conquer has been the Devils slogan from Day One. So, while we, the enlightened and advanced Western cultures not only arrogantly look down on other cultures in which the family structure is still intact, but even spend billions on destroying and killing them legally under the pretext that theyre all terrorists who need our enlightenment, the rest of the world those parts where the father of the family is actually still the head of the house, laugh their heads off about us Western wimps who are the living fulfillment of one of the most powerful prophecies in the Old Testament about the Last Days before Christs return: As for My people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them. O My people, they which lead thee cause thee to err, and destroy the way of thy paths (Isaiah 3:12).

Respect is something that has practically gotten lost in the Western, me-first culture, where everyone has become little ego-worshipers and anyone else only plays second role at best. First comes me, then the next-best person promising to cater to my own personal advance and advantage, and then somewhere those folks who are simply necessary to keep me alive, like my parents and stuff And forget about the rest of the world. Selfishness and egotism have really become the ruling mindsets and ideologies of this culture, basically because people have become so alienated from the life, Word and truth of God, that the false truth of the Enemy has taken the place of Gods law in their lives, ruling and ruining them and the entire culture at the same time. Nobody wants to be as politically incorrect to speak up against the youth of today. They are the stars of the show, the rulers of this modern, Western culture, to which the real rulers behind the scenes are trying to get the gap nations to bend. They strongly resent those cultures in which the parents, and especially the fathers still have the say in the house, and theyre looking down on them as backwards and underdeveloped, when the fact is that they simply havent veered as far off from the path God had originally ordained for mankind as those who claim to be His people. Its only since the 20th century and the development of the media, along with the public school system, that the Devil has found a way to finally enter just about every single household and subvert the weakest link in the chain, and through them obtain control through the rest of the family. He undermines the role of the father while at the same time ever boosting the egos of the children, and stirring up a sense of responsibility and loyalty in the mothers toward the child, rather than her husband. After all, the husband is nothing but the dumb old pervert who wants to have sex all the time Its our kids who determine what we, their parents, are going to buy, so they have long been the primary target audience of the mass hypnotists pulling the strings in this 21st century version of Pinocchio. Its not as if the kids were to blame, since theyre just the victims of the flood of poison unleashed on their brains via the media and the NWO school curriculum. If you tell a kid often enough that hes the invincible master of the universe, hes going to believe it and act like it. And since authority is out, it would never occur to any of us parents to actually fight for our God-given position as the head of the family. You may laugh all you want about Muslims and their backward ways, but theyre quite right in returning the courtesy and laughing about us, too. They may not have the Bible, but at least theyre sticking to what their holy book says, and refuse to let a bunch of greedy rich men fool them out of their fundamental rights. Its true that a lot of abuse has occurred in macho cultures in which women always get the raw end of the deal. But its nothing compared to the abuse, the violence and virtual rape of our entire culture and family structure that has come to pass by our so-called enlightened Western thinking.

A few days ago in Germany a man was kicked to death by a group of juvenile masters of the universe because he had dared to defend a group of children that was being harassed by them. The people who stood by did nothing. Ask any Turk, Albanian, Iraqi, Iranian, Pakistani or Arab you know whether they think that any such occurrence would even be thinkable in their country. And then feel free to keep laughing about their underdeveloped culture and keep watching TV! ____ Their land also is full of idols; they worship the work of their own hands, that which their own fingers have made. Enter into the rock, and hide thee in the dust, for fear of the LORD, and for the glory of His majesty. The lofty looks of man shall be humbled, and the haughtiness of men shall be bowed down, and the LORD alone shall be exalted in that day. For the day of the LORD of hosts shall be upon every one that is proud and lofty, and upon every one that is lifted up; and he shall be brought low And they shall go into the holes of the rocks, and into the caves of the earth, for fear of the LORD, and for the glory of His majesty, when He ariseth to shake terribly the earth. The shew of their countenance doth witness against them; and they declare their sin as Sodom, they hide it not. Woe unto their soul! for they have rewarded evil unto themselves. As for My people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them. O My people, they which lead thee cause thee to err, and destroy the way of thy paths. Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight! Therefore as the fire devoureth the stubble, and the flame consumeth the chaff, so their root shall be as rottenness, and their blossom shall go up as dust: because they have cast away the Law of the LORD of hosts, and despised the Word of the Holy One of Israel. (Isaiah 2:8, 10-12, 19, 3:9, 12, 5:20, 21, 24) This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away. Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. These also resist the truth: men of corrupt minds, reprobate concerning the faith. But they shall proceed no further: for their folly shall be manifest unto all men. (2Timothy 3:1-9)

What If?

September 30, 2009 If you were God the Master, Creator and Ruler of the universe, and you were looking for a handful of a chosen few from among your creations truly worthy of the privilege to give you a hand at Your ever increasing job, and if you had a treasure to give to them that was so precious, so rare, that really only a few could ever obtain it, where would you hide it? What would you do in order not to make it too obvious and to avoid having masses of people running after it in pursuit of their own glory and elevation, of even the sheer joy and happiness they knew this prize would bring? Wouldnt you hide it in the most despicable place, among the most ill-reputed of all people, just to make sure that only those who really meant business were going to find it? Would you hide it in a mega-church with millions of members and attendees? Would you hide it in the Vatican? Would you hide it among the glamour and glitz of the tele-evangelists, or anywhere among organized religion at all? Or would you seek out a little group of people with no reputation at all, maligned and slandered, persecuted and despised, but obedient to your word, yes even those parts of your words that none of the other big pretenders dared to put into practice because they said that just couldnt be done in their day and age? Perhaps you would even hand it to some who werent really looking for it, wouldnt even know what to think of it, and perhaps wouldnt always appreciate it as they should, thus sometimes walking and behaving in a manner a little less than worthy of their unrecognized privilege, just to make sure you wouldnt attract any fans who were in it for the loaves and fishes? What if you knew all about peoples hearts, and that they have a tendency to fall for any juicy lie ever since the beginning, and thus you only made your special, priceless privilege available to those who had an undying love for the truth and nothing but the truth?

A love so great, in fact, that they were willing to give up anything and everything else for it their ambitions, their possessions, their positions, even their responsibilities according to what people would expect of them; and they would be as radical to follow your call in spite of all that and let the dead bury their dead in order to obtain that pearl of great price If you knew that everybody would be going by outward appearance, would you hide your treasure among the beautiful, or among the ugly? If you knew that everybody would follow sweet, enticing sounds, would you hide your treasure there, or in a place where words were said that made people shake their heads and reply, This is a hard saying, who can bear it? If you knew that everybodys taste was perverted by the usurper and all they craved was the sweet stuff he heaped on them all day long, would you make the taste of your most precious vintage sweet as well? If you had a rare privilege to give away, and you wanted to make dead sure you were going to find the right few worthy of it, how obvious would you make it where that privilege was going to be found? How easy would you make it? Which would be your criteria? What sort of clues would you give them? Where would you be hiding? Among the pompous, the glamorous and glorious? Or among the downtrodden, despised and lookeddown upon? What sort of skills would they have to develop in order to hear your voice? And what would they have to let go of, in order to acquire them? What would you do if you had to choose a special few from among billions? Perhaps God might actually not be doing anything dumber than you would. What if?

Nothing but the Truth

October 2, 2009 by mcdozer If there is one valid parallel between the 1999 movie Matrix and our reality as those who claim and attempt to be genuine and authentic followers of the One, then its the scene in which Morpheus tells Neo, Remember, all Im offering is the truth. Thats all Jesus ever had to offer, too, and blessed Peter was the first one to realize and proclaim it, after the bulk of the 70 that used to follow Jesus left Him as a result of His appalling Cannibal sermon in John Chapter Six, and Jesus turns toward the twelve He had chosen and asks them, Do you also want to leave? Peter was usually one of the more impulsive of Jesus disciples who sometimes seemed to speak before he would think, but at this precise moment it must have been the Holy Spirit getting a hold of him when he said, Lord, where should we go? You alone have words of eternal life. In other words: This may be a lousy life here in the real world and in the Resistance against the machines: the food is bad, and most of our friends dont really believe that You are the One, and it looks like were fighting for a hopeless cause sometimes, totally outnumbered; and not everything seems to make sense all the time. But all we know is that Youve got the truth, and thats worth it all for us, and worthy enough a Cause to give our lives for and follow You to the death for. But just as it was in 30 A.D., such folks are rare. Most of us have much higher demands of life than merely something as impractical as the truth. We want it comfortably presented with a huge entertainment program, preferably along with a barbecue or at least with a hot band playing. Or at least we dont want to lose face with our community, but look like respectable members of society, which after all, most of us are, in our nice, big, respectable churches. Not like those weird cults who are going overboard in their religious zeal and insist on trying to convert everyone else to their cause all the time. I mean, Jesus never said anything about having to be a religious fanatic, right? In fact, arent they even a reproach to the Cause of Christ? I mean, look at them: they have no money, they have no reputation Who would want to join them? Right. Who would? I guess its still only those who are in it for the truth and nothing but the truth, against all odds.

Folks arent always as friendly in the Resistance movement, compared to the folks visiting the churches in the Matrix. They might not like you. They might even resist you. And if you look at the ones fighting on your left and on your right, youre sometimes tempted to wonder if this could be really IT They dont make it easy on you, and they dont insist on you being around, fighting along with them, unless perhaps you really mean business, and are willing to give it your all for this Cause, no matter how hopeless it seems, without murmuring and complaining. Everybody already knows that its tough, so whats the use in complaining? Or perhaps theyre just here because thats where they happened to wind up or be born without knowing anything else You look at all those happy folks in the Matrix who seems to have the best of both worlds: have their steak, and eat it, too. They may have heard about the One or that there is such a thing as the Real Word somewhere out there, but basically, their ignorance about the Resistance movement is their bliss: they dont have to endure the hardships; they enjoy the protection of the Agents and the blessing of the Architect as long as they stay safely put right where they are, and dont think about dropping out of the game and becoming unplugged from the nice illusion they know as life. Yeah, life is tough in the Resistance. And if you thought Cypher was tough, in the real Resistance, weve had dozens of his kind who have sold us out to the Agents and are bent on destroying us. Basically, all hell is breaking loose around our ears, because, after all, its us theyre fighting, and we are their enemies, not the make-belief people of God in sleepy-land, the artificially created world by the machines to keep potential resistance fighters asleep, dreaming and content. If there is one factor that is not a parallel between the Matrix trilogy and the lives of those who claim to be true followers of Him Whom we know to be the One, it is that there will never be a truce between us and the machines. There will only be an ultimate showdown; and as outnumbered as we may seem right now, and as overwhelmingly superior as the enemy forces may seem, and despite all the odds against us, we know and believe that in the end, He will win. No truce, no ceasefire, only undeniable victory, and we will see then what right now we may only be able to take

Church Sucks! But Jesus Doesnt!

October 4, 2009 The Real Thing Vs. the Conventional Fake We were invited to attend a multi-denominational open air worship service, as they like to call it, this afternoon, by some very dear friends of ours, and we attended. What it did for us, was make us realize that church simply is not our thing. It may be good and okay for a lot of people, but then there are a lot of people who also like to crowd together in big stadiums to watch 23 people chase a leather ball, or rattle their heads to the sound of bands like AC/CD or Nine Inch Nails. As far as the music goes, we have heard better, and we have definitely seen more fire at least I have, and as far as the ideology behind so-called church services goes, my conviction has reached its peak today that the one thing the world doesnt need is another sermon. What the world doesnt need is bunches of Christians rotting together and singing lukewarm songs to God and calling that service to God while the world is going to pot around our ears. Maybe there are people who need that sort of religion, just like other people need opium, whiskey or cocaine, but I dont. I guess perhaps God put us here for the handful of people on this globe who may come to share our view that church sucks, but Jesus doesnt. Jesus is totally and absolutely the Real Thing as far as I am concerned, but the way most people claim to be serving Him falls light-years short of getting anywhere near cutting the cake. What the world needs is something different, something other than church services. What the world needs to see is a true Christianity based on the principle of being living samples of obedience to God, and not another bunch of spiritual cowards comforting each other over the fact that theyre going to go to Heaven despite the fact that theyre not really obeying God, since they feverishly try to ignore the things He said that dont agree with their lukewarm and selfish life-style. Im not writing this in order to purposely aggravate anyone, but because Im upset and determined that Ive attended church for the last time in my life today, hopefully.

It just doesnt cut it. Its miles and miles away from what ecclesia (the original meaning of church) is really supposed to be. Maybe its your thing. Good for you. And maybe you think you should get as many people to participate in that sort of service. Personally, Id rather stay on the lookout for something more innovative, something more original, something more like the Real Thing, even if totally unconventional and unheard of, possibly even maligned and persecuted and rejected, like the Early Church, the original Christians and full-time followers of Christ as described in the Book of Acts Or the bedraggled band of followers of St.Francis Give me any type of radical, alive and white-hot form of Christianity, but not that conventional humdrum they call church. Sorry if that means another bunch of friends running out the door and in the opposite direction But Id rather go out and find myself some new friends then, who agree with me that church sucks, and if they dont know it yet prove to them that Jesus doesnt. Probably a lot of people think Jesus sucks because of the way Hes portrayed in the churches, or simply because theyve had the same feeling we did when they attended church Maybe its simply a matter of taste, the way some people like the music of Britney Spears or Madonna and others say, No, thanks! Maybe the pop culture version of Christianity simply isnt the Real Thing as far as some folks are concerned And maybe the world is just waiting for them to show them an alternative Maybe theyre just waiting for a handful of believers with a little bit of genuine discernment to detect that there must be something fishy, something wrong about the conventional way, that would confirm the way they feel about it: You must be kidding! This is supposed to be IT? Thats the way the followers of the greatest Revolutionary of all times are supposed to act? No way, dude! No wonder a lot of people dont want to know much about Jesus, if Hes anything similar to the bulk of His supposed followers. No offense, folks, but I think theres lots of room for improvement, and while youre at it, next time, make it a revolution, and not another mere reformation. You can count me in

Opinions Are Like

October 27, 2009 An old acquaintance of mine was once quoted as saying, Opinions are like assh*les: everybodys got one. That was at a time when he was just beginning to ascend the ladder of leadership in our relatively small but notorious faith community. While my friend probably never would have imagined that his humorous comment might yet haunt him a quarter of a a century later, it goes to show just how far reaching our words can be. - Providing youre one of those climbing the ladder of authority and position in this world, yes, even if youre part of a group thats totally out of this world What he was indicating back then was that opinions especially those of every little Tom, Dick and Harry make life harder for those trying to keep their grip firmly on the rail of the ladder. Its hard having to listen to all that the folks at grass-root level have to say while youre struggling to ascend. The problem about that attitude, though, is that every now and then some nincompoop comes along whose opinion is actually more than your average Joes comment on whatever occurrence life may offer you an opportunity to add your personal rap about. Certainly the leaders of the Roman Catholic church werent thrilled about the opinions of some Italian wise guy named Galileo Galilei in February 1610, and accordingly denounced him only to graciously pardon him nearly 5 centuries later, since it had long been proven by then that he had been right all along. Nor were they tickled pink about the notions of those like Luther who thought it was the right of every believer to be able to enjoy hearing or reading the Word of God in their own language, and not just Latin, which most of them didnt understand Most of us would certainly agree with Martin nowadays, and dare to differ with the Latin only crowd Lord only knows how many heretics were burned at the stake for voicing uncomfortable opinions which today might be considered tried and proven truths. So, if I were ever to set out on some venturous ascent of some shaky, lofty ladder, I would bear that lesson from history in mind.

Opinions may be like those most uncomely parts of our bodies which everyone possesses, but those parts are still quite necessary, even if a lot of waste gets flushed out in the process. Probably my friend has discovered by now that things arent all that easy anymore nowadays, and opinions not all that easily dismissed. The world has become a lot more demanding on leadership during the past two decades, and people who know how to use their ears are treasured and wanted (- although they still may be somewhat rare up on the ladder). Even your average teenager will get offended if you wont spend at least an hour daily listening to their tales of how Jimmy in school said the most uncool thing to Jill and it like so totally sucked etc., etc., etc. Of course, the most notorious opinion-bearer of all times didnt exactly thrill the authorities of His day with His stuff about the Kingdom of Heaven belonging to children, and the greatest among us having to become servant of all, according to His rulebook. Thats probably why most of His supposed followers (especially those in higher ranking positions) still dont give a lot of marbles to His opinions, but rather stick to their own. The truth is, though, that in the end, those sitting at the top of the ladder in His joint (although its probably going to be anything but a ladder) will be those who will have treated even the least among our brethren the way they would have treated Him; and perhaps the act of lending a listening ear instead of prematurely dismissing their opinions may have just been what will have helped you score the necessary points to get there. But alas, this is but another humble opinion from just another nobody and least of all brethren But I guess its folks like us that blogs are for

The God Who Wouldnt

October 28, 2009 Science is supposedly something based on observation: we explain how things work that we actually see happening in nature. Thats one of the flaws of the theory of Evolution: it is not based on things we actually observe, but blatantly defies some of our observations. For example, never has there been known any force or process to bring about information from lifeless matter without an intelligent author, and yet the evolutionists expect us to believe that all the heaps of information in every little cell were supposed to have come about by itself. According to the theory of Evolution, were also supposed to be evolving and progressing, improving, and thus become more intelligent, but one honest look around will only confirm the opposite actually taking place. Evolution is faith, quite similar to the faith we place in paper currencies. An American tourist may believe that the paper god in his wallet in which he trusts, is almighty, but may experience shock when confronted with the actual purchasing power of his once so powerful currency in, lets say Europe. We may believe certain things to be fact and we may think we know something, when what we are actually dealing with is a case of gross inflation: our heads and egos are inflated by a strong confidence in information and values that, when put to the fiery test, actually turn out to be invalid and worthless. Thats why the Lord told Isaiah that His thoughts were as high above ours as the heavens were above earth. We may be absolutely sure that we know something, and then He comes along and blows on our facts and shows us just how ridiculous it was for us to assume we were so smart. Some of our self-fabricated dogmas, mindsets and facts can even become so outrageous as to make Him laugh (see Psalm 2:1-4).

We do it because we want to be the boss. We want to determine whats true or false, whats goood or bad, instead of letting Him decide for us. Well, perhaps He like any good parent also wants us to make our own experiences along those lines. The more convinced we are that we know certain things, the harder it can become for Him to persuade us otherwise. The religious Jewish authorities during Jesus times were pretty sure of their ideas as to what the Messiah was suposed to look or act like. He was going to be their Savior and liberator from the physical chains of Roman opression. Just like Moses had led them out of the bondage and opression of the first world empire, the Messiah was to liberate them from the oppressors of this one, which they figured was to be the last. But it turned out that the Messiah Whom God deemed fit to send along was going to liberate them from something they didnt even want to know that they had been subjects, servants and slaves to, namely their own sins. They didnt even know they needed liberation from that. Who needs liberation from sin, when youre the cream of the crop of Gods chosen people? They expected a Savior that was going to bring about changes by a display of physical strength that was going to make the heathen tremble. Instead, this meek Messiah chose to sacrifice Himself for the darn heathen and anyone who wanted to become Gods child from then on. What sort of an unorthodox God was at work here? He doesnt seem to be operating much according to our own ideas Likewise, not a lot of people today are interested in that sort of salvation, either. God is okay for supplying material needs and physical health, but when it comes to spiritual things, lets keep it on the entertaining side of things. And woe if He dares to let us down. Well be quick to change camps. Woe if He allows anything bad happen to us, or even allows someone we love to die the epitome of all evils! - But is it? Or isnt it rather so that one of the main reasons He came was to liberate us from the slavery of one of our worst sins, namely our fear of death? If He came to deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage, (Heb.2:15), then why are we still so scared of it, and why do we still get so upset whenever He takes someone Home that we love? We would like God to do things differently than they actually happen: kill all the bad people, and let all the good people live. Make us rich and healthy and the other ones poor and sick.

Then we can believe. Then well attend church and sing How great Thou art! No wonder. Its easy then, isnt it? But what if death isnt the epitome of evil at all? What if He really wasnt kidding when He said, He that heareth My word, and believeth on Him that sent Me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life (Jn.5:24)? And what if being rich and successful isnt necessarily the epitome of bliss and happiness, for each and every one of us, personally, either? What if He in fact knows best, after all, whats good for us, and what isnt? What if Hes really the One calling the shots, and wont be blackmailed, either, by our, If Youre good to me, Ill believe in You, and if Youre not, I wont type of faith? What if the God Who wouldnt do things according to our plans has a few of His own? Then why not grant Him the same type of freedom that He grants us? But no, the minute His ideas dare to deviate from ours, we scientifically declare that He doesnt exist, or no, that Hes not the Messiah, not the right kind, not what we expected, no way, crucify that one! Probably the only thing about us that has really evolved, and that to outlandish proportions is our arrogance. Its sort of ridiculous that true believers must implore their fellowmen to show just a little bit of tolerance and openness toward an Almighty Creator. Just because He wouldnt do things the way they would if they were in charge, they grab a gun, kill a bunch of people, or live their lives accordingly, slowly but surely converting this place that once was paradise into hell on earth Forcing my child to believe that hes a monkey Brainwashing him day and night with their dogma of over-population (So feel free to relieve the problem and commit suicide?) Of why we have to go and kill other people in the name of our own justice Thank God Hes not one of us! I think wed be in really rotten shape then!

My Perception of Alex Jones (Flesh Or Spirit?)

November 3, 2009 I must say I do appreciate the work Alex Jones did on his latest two films, The Obama Deception and The Fall of the Republic. While there are certain elements in those films I would dare to disagree with, the content of valid information in them, in other words, the truth factor outweighs the flaws, such as his sometimes slightly overwhelming patriotism that is so common among Americans and seems to indicate that they truly believe that every American is at least ten times better than any citizen of any other country. Its hard to credibly condemn presidents and the powers behind the New World Order for sending American soldiers off to war, when youre a victim of one of the principal mindsets yourself that fuels those wars, namely that sort of patriotism and nationalism. If your countrys that great, why, it practically gives you a license to barge into any other country on earth with a gun in the effort to make that Hottentot backwards country similar in greatness to yours, and let some of its greatness rub off on it Without realizing it, theyre victims of the same media hogwash they rightly say the vast majority has been duped by, although to a lesser extent. But as I say, the information he does put out is significant, and the truth factor does in my opinion outweigh the patriotic hype factors. Without those two films, Id probably still live under the illusion that Obama was actually an improvement since the Bush administration. By now I know without a doubt that it really doesnt matter whose administration it is, and things, like the Bible says, are only bound to get worse. As a believer, it felt reassuring to hear Alex give God the credit in his latest film, even if only for the exuberant greatness of his country. At least he does believe in God, unlike other professional exposers of the NWO like David Icke, who seems to subscribe to the doctrines of his pal Brian Desborough, who claims that all religions and the Almighty Himself are an invention of the Illuminati, designed to enslave mankind through religion, a very popular notion that is also embraced by the Zeitgeist movement I wrote about recently. The infiltration of the truth movement by such people is probably the smartest move the Devil could have made, since theyre automatically robbing themselves of the only way out of the mess into which hes steering the world. Thats probably one factor Alex Jones fails to recognize, too, and just because he seems to believe in God, it would probably be an exaggeration to call him a spiritual man.

By failing to see the spiritual background of all these things, though, such as the rise of the NWO, Im afraid one fails to see a substantial part of the picture. For one thing, while the planned abolition of borders between countries may in terms of industrial independence and political sovereignty be a nightmare for patriotic Americans like Alex Jones, for believers who are aware that the New World Order is only going to be the last, necessary stop before Gods Kingdom will be established, the abolition of borders and national sovereignty has a less significant impact. True Christians believe and know that the coming New World Order will ultimately be headed by the Antichrist, a man, who for the last 3 1/2 years of his life and reign will be completely possessed and controlled by Satan himself, and since Satan is only an imitator and counterfeiter of God, his kingdom will only be a sorry counterfeit of Gods Coming Kingdom, in which borders and national boundaries will be history, and a sad part of it, as well. Im sorry to disappoint Alex and perhaps millions of others, but Im fairly convinced that there wont be anymore red-white-and-blue flag waving folks around in Gods Kingdom, nor patriots of any other kind than those loyal to the Kingdom that has always been not of this present world, of a very different kind, and the difference certainly includes its stance on earthly patriotism (see Hebrews 11). The same applies to the abolition of cash. While the New World Orders plans to replace paper money with the cashless system the Bible terms the mark of the Beast (the Beast being a term for the Antichrist) certainly will be truly diabolical, and we strongly advise anyone to refuse to take that mark, it is on the other hand, only yet another way in which the Devil will try to imitate Gods Kingdom, because you can bet your bottom dollar that there wont be any folks left chasing paper money, and what the Bible calls filthy lucre in the Kingdom of God! Ignoring the spiritual factors behind the New World Order and only seeing the people involved in it, is very short-sighted, indeed. The problem is, a lot of the good folks speaking in Alex films are of the opinion that if the American people would unite and stand up and rise up against the NWO, then the world could be saved from its fate, but there is unfortunately no way around this darkest chapter of history. That display of blind patriotism will be just as futile as that of the people of Israel during the time of the prophet of Jeremiah, who warned them to submit to the yoke of the king of Babylon (in some ways a proto-type of the Antichrist, since the Bible refers to both as the king of the north, although the king of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar, did in the end turn out to be a good man, which wont be the case with the AC). Jeremiah was thrown into a dungeon because of his heretical treason, but it changed nothing about the fact that he turned out to be right, after all. Some people who dont trust Alex Jones accuse him of fulfilling a purpose in the plan of the New World Order cronies: that he will be instrumental in evoking an uprising and violent resistance against the NWO that will give the rulers an excuse to clamp down on them with force, and although I doubt that this would be Alex Jones intention, the danger that this is going to happen is quite real. Physical, armed resistance against the NWO will be just as futile as the efforts of Jewish zealots during the Roman occupation of Judea, which was totally crushed. As I wrote in my last entry, one of the reasons the Jews rejected Jesus was because they had been hoping for a messiah that was going to liberate them from Roman occupation. But Jesus actually extended His

compassion to Romans as well, as well as Samaritans, which were despised by the Jews, and it seemed that He was announcing that God was going to extend His pact to any heathen that would accept His sacrifice, which is in effect what happened. The problem is that if you think that you and your country or people are so good youre just about perfect, and the only liberation you need is from the physical oppression of those who are making you pay taxes, then you wind up shouting crucify Him! at the one who indicates that you have a bigger problem, which you need to get rid off first. Jesus clearly stated that the yoke of sin that even the seemingly perfect Jewish people were under was something much more serious and warranted greater attention than liberation from the Romans. He would deal with the Roman empire later, just as He will with the upcoming New World Order, be assured, but what you need to be liberated from first of all, is your sins. You need to avail yourself of the only exit and way out of this present matrix by accepting the blood of Jesus Christ as remission from the one thing that will hold you captive in a stronger grip than any physical oppressor could. Why? Because as good as you may think you are, there is no guarantee on Gods earth that you would do any better if you were in charge, unless you heart has been supernaturally changed by the grace of God, and you have allowed Him to replace your own sinful, selfish and carnal nature by the new creature Christ can and will make out of you, if you let Him. One of the major issues about this present life, as far as God is concerned, is the issue of flesh versus spirit. What will you place your bet on? Which will you put your money on? Will you put your hopes in your own arm of the flesh (and remember, your brain is just another chunk of that flesh, and your own smartness wont save you, either)? Or do you recognize that there is something Greater at work, even if invisibly, behind the scenes, that is going to empower you to truly rise above all the evils in this world, just as It- or He empowered all the martyrs throughout history? Do you think that the worst that could possibly happen to you is your physical death, and the end of your fleshly existence is going to be The End, period? Think again! It all depends on which youll choose to put your trust in: Gods Promises of eternal life in a better world than even your oh-so-beloved America, or your own wit and strength to save you. I guess its always harder for those who have got it all going for them in the flesh, to choose the humble and submissive option of yielding to God and letting Him do it through you, rather than the do-it-yourself option. I guess well meet at the finishing line and see who will have made it there first. But let me give you this little piece of advice from Aesop, the citizen of a country and culture which at one time in history deemed itself to be the most glorious and the peek of civilization, just as quite a few others before and since: The hare never made it, but the tortoise did. Or, as Morpheus put it to Neo in the Matrix scene in which he teaches him to fight properly (relying on spirit, rather than flesh): Do you think that my being stronger or faster has anything to do with my muscles in this place? You think thats air youre breathing now?

The Bleak Picture (Or: The End of the Tale)

November 6, 2009 The difference between the world view of the truth movement people and the picture the Bible portrays of the world were living in, is that the adherents to the truth movement have more optimistic expectations concerning the capabilities and supposed inherent goodness of people. They think that if we just get rid of the bad people, thatll do, and everything will be honky-dory. They call all the good people to rise up against the bad people, and then well have democracy and peace and freedom and live happily ever after. Unfortunately, the Bible tells a more realistic tale about ourselves, of which many say, This is an hard saying; who can bear it? The problem is that bad people often started out as good people, and good people, no matter how good, stand every chance to become bad once theyre in power, because power inevitably corrupts. One classic example of this is the Jewish king David, considered by far the best king the Jews ever had, who of all people really should have known better: having been persecuted and haunted by his predecessor Saul for half his life, having to seek refuge in caves and with the enemies of his people, what does he do once he becomes king? Falls in love with his neighbor and sees to it that her husband is killed in battle. And that was the best that Gods people ever came up with, so, you can only imagine how rotten the rest of the world is, and contrary to the fable of evolution, I have news for you: were not getting better all the time! If the Bible is any sort of authority on the human psyche at all, it certainly paints a more sinister picture:

The imagination of mans heart is evil from his youth, (Genesis 8:21), He that trusteth in his own heart is a fool (Proverbs 28:26), The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? (Jeremiah 17:9) and There is none that doeth good, no, not one (Romans 3:12). Incidentally, even Jesus refused to let anyone call Him good, (Mark 10:18), and if anyone on earth ever should have been able to deserve that attribute, it certainly ought to have been the Son of God So much on the goodness of the good from the highest possible Authority. And as far as the immediate future of our world is concerned, the Bible does not predict that an army of good people will rise up to stand up against the Antichrist before he comes to power or force him off his throne. First of all, the one sin that folks like Alex Jones and his friends seem to underestimate is the ever present fear in the hearts of the majority of the people. (As illustrated by the large majority still writing off any suspicions about the official version of the 9/11 incidents as Conspiracy theories, or the masses that are thronging to get their swine flu vaccination) What they also seem to underestimate is peoples love for darkness, as opposed to the truth (see John 3:19). Theyre a lot more willing to accept an attractive and comfortable lie than the ugly truth. Which is also what explains the Endtime scenario that the Bible depicts: Evidently there will be a resistance movement against the Antichrist, and there will obviously be survivors of his war against the saints (otherwise thered be no one left for Jesus to pick up in the Rapture, which will not happen before the Tribulation). But the weapons the members of that movement will avail themselves of will most certainly not be guns or bombs or Molotov cocktails. In Revelation chapter 11 we find the account of two outstanding members of the Antichrist-Resistance, and we find here that the weapons they will wield will be supernatural (see 11:5, 6). But its not like they will be members of some huge and massive movement the type that Alex Jones and friends seem to dream of. In fact, when those two will finally be killed, it says that the citizens of the world will celebrate their execution as if it were a new version of Christmas (verses 9, 10). The picture of events when the shit hits the fan as portrayed by Alex is more that of the innocent masses of citizens having to defend themselves from the bad NWO cops. Im afraid that those citizens wont be all that innocent anymore once Helter Skelter is being let loose, and the supermarkets will already have been robbed clean. If they mow down their fellow humans already not, during peace times, I dont want to know what its going to be like then, when the average Joe is going to have to show just how good he is at dog eat dog. And I doubt that people around the globe are going to behave like all them fine Christian folk in Texas.

After all, the great Tribulation is not called Tribulation for nothing. Its not going to be your average Hollywood type of adventure where the good ones are going around dodging bullets while all the bad people fall left and right. Its going to be hell on earth. If you think its bad now, cheer up, it could be worse, and its going to be. There is going to be an insurgence against the Antichrist, from what I understand, at the battle of Armageddon, where 200 million horsemen, presumably from the East (Rev. 16:12) will march toward Jerusalem, but theyre not going to be your local American truth lovers and self-made Rambos. Theyre most likely going to be those we generally label terrorists today, the large part of the Muslim world that will refuse to bow down to the image erected to the Antichrist, because idolatry was already what they hated about Christianity, and why their religion got started in the first place. But even they wouldnt stand a chance without the supernatural intervention of Him Who was sent into this world for the one purpose: to save it. The very name He chose for His earthly existence means Savior, and the first time around He came to save us from ourselves. The second time He will come to save us from the one who was the culprit to begin with, and created the need for us to be saved A fairy tale? Okay, so you go ahead and believe in your fairy tale, that all intelligent life sprang forth from life-less matter and keeps evolving into better and better good people all the time, and I believe mine. The fundamental difference lies with the authors. And I guess only the end of the tale will tell which of the two will have told the truth.

God Is a Verb

November 9, 2009 The revelation that God is a verb, as laid out in the 14th chapter of The Shack, and evidently based on a quote by Buckminster Fuller, lends new meaning to the famous opening phrase of the Gospel of John, In the beginning was the Word (John 1:1). Incidentally, in the Spanish version, the phrase uses the term Verbo, as in verb, instead of the more modern word, palabra, (and I remember frowning on that years ago, because of its implication that God was a Verb, instead of a Noun). But it makes sense in the light of the reference to Gods old and Hebrew name (Jehova, Jahwe or Jah) meaning I am, (I am that I am, or I will be, etc.). which in many languages is simply the verb of being in the first form or person (i.e. soy, Spanish for I am, sono, Italian) Naturally, as the book points out, we humans are more fascinated by nouns, and more specifically, things we chase after all our lives in our pursuit of (the nouns) happiness, money, fame you name it. Most of the 10 things the Ten Commandments forbid or tell us we shouldnt do, are things that we do in pursuit of those nouns (things) we think will make us happy: We steal, kill, lie, covet our neighbors goods and wife and then make idols out of them and worship them, (by spending an infinitely greater amount of time on their pursuit than in our relationship with our Maker), instead of the One Who alone deserves to be worshiped, (taking His name in vain whenever we dont get enough of them), and since we hardly ever stop voluntarily in our perpetual pursuit of those nouns, God slapped the commandment to keep the Sabbath in there, to make sure that well give it a break at least one day per week It also lends all the more sense to why Jesus told His disciples, I give you a new commandment: to love one another. In other words, If you keep that one, you wont need all the other donts anymore If you just do the right thing, the thing that God by nature does all the time (God is love another Verb), then youll be alright.

Perhaps He had to show us first how to do it by His own life, before we would ever understand it, (hence first the 10 donts), and if theres one thing we can gather from Jesus earthly life, it is the fact that it was most certainly not a life lived in pursuit of things (or nouns) at all. All He did was do and say things that would evoke processes and actions (verbs) in our lives that would cause us to revolute, turn around and live and love and even die happily ever after, because the way He did and does all those things are simply divine. (I just hope that none of the disciples of Richard Dawkins are going to find this blog entry, or Ill be swamped by insulting comments about the lack of sense Im making as far as theyre concerned But as some insignificant little songwriter once put it: Love doesnt care what people say) Maybe thats the reason why so many people who claim to be Christians or believers lack all the evidence of their discipleship in their sample: they dont do God. They lack the doing part of God. They may think they have God wrapped up in a neat little package like one of those Christmas presents under their trees, and the concept of God all figured out in the cube on top of their necks, and keep Him tightly locked up inside that big house they built for Him for 25.000.000 bucks, but the rest of the world still refuses to believe one word theyre saying when they open their mouths and talk about God, because talking seems to be the only action and verb in their religion They dont do or practice the verb that God is. They havent even yet begun to love. I as a person whose principal and arch enemy is the sin of laziness must admit that it isnt necessarily always easy to do God. Likewise, our other human core weaknesses our anger, pride, our tendencies to lie, our envy, avarice, fears, hedonistic streaks and desire for power these all strive in us to stop us from doing the God-thing, the verb, the action that is God. Our natural inclinations are to do the things that are good for ourselves, that give us big bellies, stuffed pockets, lots of zeroes behind the digits on our bank accounts, friends on MySpace or whatever, but the action of doing God and what God does is sort of alien to most of us, and its almost as if we have to lose our own selfish lives first before we can find life the way Love intended Besides, doing God is so dreadfully unpopular in our world Anything else in our world may be popular, except that one single activity. Doing God comes across as corny, if not totally uncool or downright outrageous to most of our fellowmen who follow the examples of our Hollywood icons that we tend to shape our lives after, rather than the sad figure hanging on the cross in the building we visit on Sundays. Well, perhaps thats precisely one of the points the author(s) of The Shack wanted to bring across, and what some of their publications refer to as thinking outside the box:

God is not something you can stick in a box and say, Its MINE! Its something you either do or forget it! Its what determines whether our lives are a foretaste of Heaven, or a selfish, Sisyphus-like existence of hell on earth. God is the Action thats making everything happen, even if He may temporarily do most of it hidden from our view and from behind the scenes, letting us live under the impression that were the ones doing everything only until the curtain will be removed and it shall be revealed just how much the Great Director and His staff were actually involved in the making of this Big Picture Coincidentally, even the original meaning of the word church (ecclesia) is based on a verb. God is calling all of us out and away from our materialistic, greedy ways of thinking, to a new world, where His happy children dance around in a huge circle, calling out to anyone who will hear: Cmon, lets do some God together!

Uppercase Truth

November 17, 2009 There used to be a time when I never thought I could have learned anything from a Catholic. Perhaps due to the fact that the sample of Christianity I had witnessed in my hometown Catholic church drove me into atheism by the age of 10. But then I came across the writings of the Franciscan Richard Rohr, and found out that God seems to have made exceptions to every rule, and that you can even learn something from a Catholic. Likewise, I was not expecting any mind-blowing experiences to come out of the atheist camp since my latest experiences with countless comments of the defenders of disbelief on our Youtube channels, or having read what some of their supposedly brightest lights like Richard Dawkins or the Zeitgeist people have to say. But then again, you never know when God knocks on your door with a surprise, ready to push over all your carefully construed clichs and mental drawers we keep our fellow humans in.

I have found an atheist who is probably a better Christian than I. And very much unlike most of his fellow unbelievers, he comes forward as a defender of those from the other side or camp of the opposition and writes a book called, An Atheist Defends Religion: Why Humanity is Better Off with Religion Than Without It. If I ever would have had and lost anything like it, I would have said Bruce Sheiman has restored my faith in humanity. But since I have long ago decided to place my trust in Someone more trustworthy than my own kind, at least I can say, Bruce, thanks for making my day! And for reminding me of how a real Christian is supposed to act, seeing the good in the folks on the other side and coming forward to put in a good word for them, which is probably a closer version of loving your enemies than what the majority of Christendom is coming up with nowadays. In his book, Bruce Sheiman reminds his readers that while Christianity may not have a snow-white record (as were constantly being reminded by those who would love to blast Christianity to hell for its crusades and other crimes of history both past and present), there are nonetheless a lot of decent Christian (or otherwise religious) folks who are doing a lot of good to make this world a better place (and if you ever tried your hand at it, you may know just how tough that attempt can be, especially in the light of the fact that most folks will never give you the credit for it, no matter what you do just because youre a believer). Regardless of those culprits and fakes who have abused religion as a cloak for their less than noble purposes (including in very recent history, such as the previous US administration without saying the present is any better), as a sum, the impact of (true) religion on the world was a good one, even if many folks may not realize it. Historians cannot identify any other cultural force as robust as religion that could have carried civilization along. Mostly, though, he points out something that strikes me as purely divine genius, namely that in our drive to discover what he terms lowercase truthfacts and knowledgewe have sacrificed uppercase truth meaning and purpose. In other words, figuring out all the scientific little details about how the universe works may be all fine and good, but not really replace our need for a higher purpose in life than your usual survival of the fittest scheme thats slowly turning our carefully analyzed and dissected planet into living hell for more and more people each day. He observes that our minds are called to something more than a relative truthand if moral imperatives do not depend on God then they are not absolute and remain relative. In other words, were not really good at kidding ourselves into accepting any counterfeit, fake goodness or standard were supposed to live by or strive for. The human souls is desperate to find, and unready to settle for anything less than the Real Thing in the long run. Pointing out some of the moral advantages of those Christians and believers who actually did get the point of what their religions founder had intended, including their quality to respect humans as created in the image of God instead of just another hoard of highly mutated two-legged mammals who must

constantly prove to each other who is the strongest, he contends that the world is actually not any worse off because of religion. One might argue in favor of atheists as civilized and courteous as Mr. Sheiman, that in the light of Jesus recommendation to judge a tree by its fruits that what He would truly consider a person following in His footsteps and worthy of His commendation, regardless of which camp he professes to belong to (since we live in a world of pretenders, after all), one way to find out who truly is a Christian or a good person one would have to simply look at the way they treat their fellowmen. And in this aspect, Bruce Sheiman has proven himself worthy of a higher commendation than I would be able to presently grant the majority of my fellow believers, and awakens in me the desire that there were more folks like him around, regardless of whether they share my belief or not. Atheists who dont persecute me for my faith make for a truly a refreshing change, including from those fellow-believers who persecute me for the differences in my belief system from theirs. Folks capable of seeing the good in people, even in those from the opposing camp, and even capable of defending them before the world, in my opinion are a greater sample of the kind of love Christ intended for us to live and practice than the attempt to press every- or anyone into our same molds. Ive said before that maybe Gandhi, being a Hindu, proved himself a better Christian by His actions than probably most Christians during his life-time. Perhaps Mr. Sheiman, being an atheist (though allegedly considering himself an aspiring theist), by his gesture, is putting forth a better Christian example than many of those who claim that label for themselves. Weve all heard the line With friends like that, who needs enemies? Well, with enemies like him, we would all soon have a lot more friends. I have certainly learned something from him, and have been reminded of the fact that the One I look up to as my personal Guide and Master also stood out by bridging the gap between enemy camps (such as Jews and Romans), and it makes me long for that quality that His early followers stood out for, which ultimately enabled them to conquer the Roman empire with meekness and love. Im only afraid that Bruce might encounter the same type of rejection from the hardliners of his own camp that Jesus had to face from the religious hardliners of His day for showing sympathy to the Romans and preaching Love your enemies. Perhaps the statement Blessed are they who are being persecuted for righteousness sake can also apply to atheists. The truth is the truth, no matter who preaches it. And in this case, the truth award of the day goes to Bruce Related articles: http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/guestvoices/2009/09/an_atheist_defends_the_value_of_reli gion.html http://www.zenit.org/article-27550?l=english

The Mindset of Insignificance

Sometimes a person struggling in the fight of being a furious voice for the truth against an army, nay a deluge, of lies and lie-blarers can wake up discouraged, wondering, What the hell am I doing here anyway? What difference on earth am I going to make anyway? I call it the mindset of insignificance that probably overtakes all of us sometimes. After all, its being scientifically drilled into us. They even have a scientific name for it and called in the Copernican principle or principle of mediocrity, a scientific fact, (as far as its religious devotees are concerned), closely related to the fact of Evolution, which is to remind us all daily, and many times throughout every day of our lives of our devastating insignificance in this universe: After all, each of us represents nothing more than an insignificant conglomeration of chemicals and matter on an equally insignificant spec of dust among hundreds of billions of others in one galaxy among yet hundreds of billions so they say. Except that some scientists who refuse to adhere to the dictatorial brainwash of the mainstream scientific community are coming up with arguments that the odds of other insignificant specs of dust like our planet to exist in our galaxy arent as high as the prophets of the Copernican principle like Carl Sagan made them sound to be. Turns out that our insignificant spec of dust holds a few privileges we shouldnt take for granted. And as far as the tiny, lonely voice for truth against vast majorities is concerned, it wouldnt be the first time that God shows that one man with Him can suffice to defeat he entire opposing army: from Moses to Gideon and David, who hurled the decisive rock against the giants head that would bring his countrys intimidated army back to life, and further on down the line to Elijah, Elisha, Jeremiah and Paul, St. Francis, Luther and Gandhi little, seemingly insignificant people who won decisive battles against armies of empires that vastly outnumbered them; and it stands to reason that if God did it that way before, whos to tell Him that He cant do it again? Of course, the ever growing vast majority of modern day Philistines will joke about our God even more profanely nowadays, since they cooked up a literal flood of scientific arguments to disprove His existence a flood that would require an arc to stay afloat and rising above it and to discourage any

insane Don Quixote from any noble ambitions real fast, unless he remains steadfastly ignoring their ceaseless deafening rants. If the Evolutionists seem to be right about one thing, its that we do appear to be herd animals, and not many of us are carved out to be sole fighters against an overwhelming majority. We want our own army on our side and behind us. God alone, due to His unforgivable handicap of invisibility, doesnt seem to be enough for any of us most of the time. Even folks who have no problems admitting that there is a spirit world with wicked entities in it that manipulate our realm dont have it in them to believe or even accept the idea that perhaps if those wicked and demonic entities exist, there might also be a good Guy in that realm somewhere, because that would be religious, and no, theyre not religiously inclined. Demons? Yes. God? No. No, they also want to see an army of great awakers rise behind them to save them and all of mankind out of their own mess. The only way, they seem to reason, were ever going to overcome the curse of our insignificance, is by amassing so many of us that were also going to be a flood of good people, rising up against the bad people Well, I wish to God they were right, and the Great Awakening should really happen. But then what? Meet the new boss the same as the old boss? I think weve heard that tune before I think the only Boss Whos ever going to make a real and lasting difference is the One Who is trying to prove that a seemingly insignificant spec of dust doesnt necessarily have to be all that insignificant by putting it in its unique position in the first place and by dying for each so seemingly insignificant soul on this planet as if to show that for Him there is no such thing as insignificant. If youre out for quantity and size, then maybe thats your thing, but the invisible Maker behind the scenes of the universe seems to have a knack for little things and seemingly insignificant details. We may be dust alright, but when blown and carried into the right position within the light, even a tiny spec of dust can sparkle and shine like a diamond. Lets see what insignificant piece of rock is going to land our present day Goliaths on their nose while the by-standing armies are going to wonder Hey, why didnt I sling that thing? Or what unconventional methods God is going to use to prove to us one again that its not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord (Zec.4:6)

Politics of Universal Significance

Not the center of the universe? - Perhaps not for us, but for its Maker?

It takes faith sometimes, not to give in to the overwhelming evidence of our insignificance when not only we are one single, imperfect person among billions of others, but we also know that we live on one tiny planet among hundreds of billions in one galaxy of yet billions It certainly defies the odds of a God who loves you, - yes you, the way that He only loves you, and so much so, that He would have given His Son for you even if you would have been the only one And not only that, but there are other odds that speak as blaring testimonies against Gods love, wisdom, if not His very existence, and act as the extended index finger of Satan, the accuser of God and saints alike, waving in His face: What about handicapped people? What about all the natural disasters that kill millions? You can blame wars and starvation, perhaps even some diseases, on humans, but what about that? Personally, I have stopped viewing handicapped people as necessarily inferior to myself ever since one stressful afternoon when I came upon a handicapped young person with an expression of heavenly peace and bliss on his face that I never possessed, after having been fuming and fretting my way through the traffic on a German highway in order to get to my destination me, the enlightened, spiritual man If nothing else, handicapped people are a perfect illustration of the spiritual state of many of us supposedly so enlightened spiritual children of God. They have often turned out to be more than a blessing and a life-changer (for the better) for those who have had to take care of them, and perhaps have led the one or the other of us to the point where we stopped arguing with God about our personal definitions of good and evil. As far as the deaths caused by natural disasters, or even death itself in general, Ive come to the point where Im not so sure at all anymore whether God hadnt spoken the truth, after all, when He warned Adam and Eve that on the day they would eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they would surely die.

Perhaps they didnt die physically. But could it be that the life they lived hence (and the life we have inherited from them since), in Gods eyes is actually more comparable to death, than what He calls life? So, what if death, in that case, wouldnt be the great, terrible evil we all dread so much, and thus, not a curse for those victims of natural disasters, at all, but rather a blessing? (- Tough on those left behind, for sure, but arent they going to join their loved ones sooner or later, too?) I know, it sounds outrageous, but I am no more of a writer or theologian than Don Quixote was a knight. Im just saying what if? What if God likes to play against the odds? Some people hate the idea of God using anybody, but what if being used by God is actually the best thing that cold ever happen to you? And well, if God doesnt have any scruples about using us, lets have a look at the type of folks he chooses: Not the strong, not the wise, not the glamorous, but the foolish, despised, seemingly weak before the world. Perhaps all our analyzing and calculating and the sum of all our supposed wisdom here at the peak of Evolution in the 21st century still amounts to nothing more than foolishness (= a joke) with God, and He can still do better with a handful of fools and handicapped than all our heroes and geniuses put together. Not that He would need to show off His superiority. Its just that we doubt His capabilities altogether.

When we had the choice of Who would you like to run this place? God, or yourselves with the assistance of your dear old friend, the Serpent, we fell for the propaganda machine of the big empty promises of the Devil (obviously being the better politician) and went for the Me!!! Meeee!!!!! Meeeeee!!!!!! option without hesitation. And if youd cast votes again over that right now, which option do you think the majority of our 7 billion would cast in their vote for? Contrary to the masters of the coming New World Order, which is ultimately going to usher in the ultimate politician: the Antichrist, who openly preach the eradication of two thirds of the planets population, God seems to value and treasure every life, however seemingly insignificant it may be to us. The label politician applies to Him as much as it would apply to oxygen: invisible, but infinitely more useful and user-friendly. So, needless to say, although vastly outnumbered, as ever, by a vast, perhaps democratic but thoroughly brainwashed majority, Ill cast in my vote for the politics of Universal Significance, as opposed to the common mindset of universal insignificance. What is there to enjoy, anyway, if one can no longer enjoy the little things?

Beginnings, Origins and Survival of the Fittest

December 2, 2009 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth, the light, the dry land, vegetation, and only then (according to the biblical account) as unbelievable to our evolution-framed minds as it may sound the rest of the matter in the universe: the stars and other planets and the moons, then the fishes and birds, land animals, and finally, His crowning creation, man, took a rib from his side and made a woman from it. As outrageously bizarre as all that may sound to us, when God saw it, He begged to differ and deemed it good. It was a spotless, you might say just about perfect world, bubbling with the knowledge of good, the sheer evidence of a divine Creator as visible by His handiwork, truly deserving of this attribute: good. Then along came the first lie, well presented by the mind of an obviously skilled debater and debunker, mind you, and as innocent and perhaps gullible and naive as the first human couple was, they swallowed it hook line and sinker, introducing into that pure world the factor that would change everything well, nearly everything: evil. However long or short their existence in a good and perfect world had been, the difference between what had been and was now was as vast as night and day, as life and death itself. They may not have died physically, but was this really life? Not when youve known the real thing *** In the beginning was the Word the Word so unlike those empty, hollow, vain and idle sounds proceeding from human mouths that may say one thing and mean another the Word of truth, perhaps hard to believe for those who prefer a lie; and as scarce as it always has been in this world, the supply of

that truth was always greater than the demand for it by a race that always seems to have had a greater knack for the darkness than the light, the lie, rather than the truth. Along came Charles Darwin with a proposition of an idea and theory he would have meant to be perhaps carefully considered, but when people heard it, they immediately embraced it as their new truth: This is IT! they exclaimed! This is going to be our new truth! Let us banish the old one and teach this teaching as the sole and principal foundation of all that shall be called knowledge from henceforth. From now on, our children will grow up being taught the new truth! Great men arose, basing their lives philosophy on The Origin of Species, names that would change the world as it had previously been known (similar to the way it had so drastically changed once before, millennia ago), names like Lenin, Hitler, Stalin and Mao only to name a few who proved by their unprecedented slaughter of millions that truly, this was a world of the survival of the fittest. New sciences were created and billions and yet billions of dollars and other currencies were pumped into new evidence that would support the new paradigm and the abolition of the old, (for there was no illusion that enough money could not create and make it appear deceivingly real if it was being repeated often enough), simultaneously increasing the machinery that would continuously support the survival and domination of the fittest: ever more powerful weapons, capable of annihilating every breath that would dare to rise up against them. Soon, mankind would be ready for the arrival of the dawn of a New Age and World Order, headed by the one in whom the mindset of liberation from the old truth would culminate, and who would fill mankinds atrocious need for a god by his own forceful assumption of that position: a time of triumph for some, and one of greater sorrow than they had ever known for those who refused to embrace this final manifestation of the new truth. In order to make a final statement underlining the universal paradigm of the survival of the fittest, the new world leader at last declared all-out war on those who refused to bow down to him, and on the One Himself who dwells in the heavens, a time of great persecution, bloodshed and tribulation, culminating in one final battle, which was won with one great shout and yet another outrageous act of defying all that humans would have deemed possible or even thinkable, just as He had done it in the beginning. *** In the new beginning, there was love. Love in the hearts of a people who had been saved from the darkness, from the lies and from the evil they had brought upon themselves by ever welcoming these things and preferring them to the light, to the truth, and over that which was good. Love that had been acquired from the painful lesson of where all these lies, the evil and the accompanying sins would lead. Love for a God, Who, in the End turned out to have known better than all the proclaimed wise men of ages past, and as outrageously unbelievable as it may sound once again love, at long last, for one another.

Evolution by Numbers (Open Letter to an Atheist)

December 4, 2009 Dear Scott, first of all I want to thank you for having replied to my recent comment in such a calm, kind and patient manner. It has confirmed to me once again that atheists, as different in their world views from my own as they may be, sometimes possess the very Christian attributes of kindness and patience, etc., that we, the believers, arent exactly always famous for. Probably a large part of the world doubts the existence of our God at least in part due to to our failure to behave the way He would want us to. But you have to see our dilemma: Were up against a huge construct, the matrix of science, that has left very little room for an excuse for living for our kind, the ones you refer to as those possessing medieval views. While others may refer to religion as the matrix that holds certain people captive (and I strongly agree when it comes to many of the dogmas of the established churches and religions), what bothers me is that a large part of what is being conveyed as facts on behalf of the scientific community is in actuality a far cry from the right to be referred to as thus, and is often only a theory at best (if it is based on observation) or (if not) some paradigm based on yet another assumption that we are never told how vague it actually is. In my opinion, the authority that a lot of our current science apparatus is based on, is raw power: man power fueled by the gigantic flow of resources poured into the effort to uphold and elaborate on the philosophy and theory that has become the only acceptable one in our society. In my opinion, it is comparable to the force dictatorial regimes such as the Soviets under Stalin, the Nazis under Hitler or the Communists under Mao have used, to only name a few, and coincidentally, the paradigm of Evolution is the one common factor between those regimes and our supposedly free democratic world.

Thus you can perhaps understand how frustrating it may be to fend against your giant construct when all we, the Creationists have, is one chapter of a Book that is supposed to give us the only alternative, which seems totally absurd in the light of what the scientific community claims are the facts. I want to thank you also for pointing out the one argument which in your opinion speaks in favor of the existence of our God, and youre doubtlessly right that without having personally experienced the Presence and Power of such a God, I would not be wasting my time on writing this. One thing however, you seem to have ignored completely about my previous comments, and that is the issue of the discovery of information as a necessary ingredient for any formerly conceived as simple or even simplest life form, and the fact that never in the history of mankind has any force or process been observed that should have brought forth information from lifeless matter without an author. It is here where the Bible gives us a clue that confirms this. It starts out with the same three words as that infamous first chapter of the Bible that makes those who take the rest of the Book literally the laughing stock of the scientific community, In the beginning, but then continues with the thought, was the Word. A word (Greek: logos) is a means to transmit or convey information, and the German Creation scientist Dr. Werner Gitt has elaborated on this further in his book In the Beginning was Information. So, we the community of believers in the Author of that Information know that at the beginning of creation (you may prefer to call it the universe) there was, evidently, Information. And Im talking information not of the kind that a bunch of chimpanzees could have randomly produced by hacking away on typewriters for gazillions of years (very lousy argument, btw.), but specific information necessary to produce a functioning universe with complex life, written in the specific language or code that the existing receptors of that information were (and continue to be in every cell of your body) able to process. Were not talking Hamlet here, but something far more complex. Now, you and your distinguished colleagues from the science community tell us that there is nothing that a few billion or trillion years could not accomplish, along with a little bit of luck, and, well, perhaps the aid of an infinite amount of parallel universes to keep trying their luck at this cosmic casino, which happened to enable ours to hit the jackpot. In other words, the difference between your Gospel and ours is, In the beginning there was time. Lots of it. I mean really, lots and lots of it. So much time in fact, that it is totally impossible for us to comprehend it, seeing that even the alleged 6000 years of world history the Bible comes up with seem like a dozen eternities to us. So much time that it would sound utterly ridiculous to even start arguing against it. The power of your argument then lies in, as I stated above, in the sheer power of numbers: 1. The astronomical sum of money that has been poured into keeping the evolutionary science apparatus alive over more than a century (Apparently the Vatican isnt the only entity dedicated to financing religious beliefs). It would probably be no exaggeration and perhaps even modest to speculate that a dollar or ten or even a hundred for every year that is supposed to have passed since the Big Bang may have been just what kept that theory being drilled into every earth childs head for the past 70 years. 2. The legions of employees of those resources: teachers, media personnel, professors, palaeontologists, archaeologists, geologists and members of other sciences who only stand a chance to last in their

profession if they obediently allow their findings to confirm the existing paradigm (What happened to some of those who didnt can be seen in Ben Steins movie Expelled No Intelligence Allowed! 3. And, as mentioned before, the number of years it is supposed to have taken for all of this (= Evolution) to have taken place. A number, by the way, which seems to be subject to the same sort of inflation over the decades as the currencies that keep the theory blasting in living rooms and class rooms alike. Lets be honest, Scott: We are very easily impressed by numbers. With numbers that you and your colleagues come up with, its easy to stay calm. Im having to struggle to even pay my rent, because nobody wants to support a lunatic who seriously believes in the biblical account of Creation. It is definitely safer to swim with the current of the mainstream of the evolutionary matrix. Especially since Im not part of the machinery of the religious establishment matrix, either. The only thing Ive got going for me is a God Who couldnt care less about numbers and all the odds against Him and His Cause. He has always, throughout history (the history that you wouldnt seriously grant us, because youve read dozens of book that told you It wasnt really so) well, throughout what we believe to be history, in that case won His battles with one or two or a handful of people against largely superior armies. If Im wrong and youre right, then the wielders of the sheer power of wealth, mass and numerical superiority may have the world for good, and our brand of lunatics will disappear before long (especially since its our brand of people that is coming dangerously close to be branded as the sort of terrorists that are to blame for all the evils in this world, soon to justify a new, global kind of holocaust). However, if against all the astronomic odds I and my brothers and sisters should turn out to be right, after all, it shall be the meek, not the dinosaurs (the Tyrannosauruses of Wall Street et al), who will inherit the earth.

Chronicle Of A (Small) Financial Miracle

December 5, 2009 The problem Im having with a God Who was just supposed to have kicked off some process of evolution gazillions of years ago and then told His prophets to write down a story of creation only to be saying afterwards, I was just kiddin folks I used Evolution to do it is that He would most likely be gazillions of miles away from me. If He was too busy to be involved in the creation of at least the first man (and woman), the way the Bible said He was, but instead let man gradually evolve from a looooooong line of monkeys and other mammals, reptiles and tadpoles, making who or whatever was capable of being called the first man resemble a cross between Frankenstein and King Kong rather than the image of God Almighty, then He would also be way too busy to count the hairs on our heads the way Jesus said He would, and make that statement just another one of countless lies, exaggerations and not-sos in the Bible. Certainly Hed be to busy to be involved in my financial problems, and one of the first chapters Id have to rip out of my New Testament would be Matthew 6, in which Jesus admonishes His disciples not to live for physical things, but promises that if they would seek first the Kingdom of God, all these things would be added unto them. Not that that chapter would have much actual relevance in the lives of probably 99% of existing Christians in the 21st century. But it does to me. It has, ever since I met the Family International at the age of 13. I had been reading the New Testament on my way to school and got so turned on about it that I got in trouble even with the leaders of our local faith community because I told the parents of one of my school mates that I took Matthew 6 literally (and they called up the community inquiring whether I was the only loony). Many local community leaders later I still believe in it. I remember the time in Argentina in 1984 when my future wife, another team member and I traveled 3000 km within 3 weeks for our radio show, having 50 Dollars in our pockets, and never having spent one dime of them. Actually, we returned with more than what we had left with, and yet we had traveled in

comfortable buses, spent the nights in pensions or hotels and had 3 meals a day in different restaurants, all donated. We held meetings for our listeners in half a dozen different towns in halls, hotel lobbies or similar places without having to pay a dime for their usage. I know what it means when God says I have set before thee an open door that no man can shut. Thats why I get so upset when Christians call Him a liar and say, No, He was just kidding in the Bible, and we can scientifically prove it. Probably if I were a professor at some university teaching my students all the many reasons why Charles Darwin makes more sense than all the prophets in the Bible put together, Id have to believe my own b sh.t, too in order to be able to live with myself. Perhaps fortunately for some and unfortunately for most, I dont receive a big check at the end of the month for pursuing any such activity. One of the few things I have done for a living in order to help God a little bit keep that Promise about all these things shall be added unto you has been to play a little bit of music every now and then. And the older you get, the more you can relate to the old chieftain in Little Big Man in the Good day to die scene where he performs the magic ritual in preparation for his entrance into the eternal hunting grounds: Sometimes the magic works, and sometimes it doesnt. This past month was one of those months when it doesnt, since we didnt have a single gig, and the bills kept coming anyway. We have those months every once in a while, and so far, He has always done it and never let us down. Did I mention that I faithfully give my tithe ever since I earned my first income at the age of 17 before I bid my mom goodbye to follow Jesus? I know God wasnt kidding either about His Promise Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in Mine house, and prove Me now herewith, saith the LORD of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it (Malachi 3:10). Some say its unscriptural to tithe. Well, Im not the right person to be taught that sort of theology. I might just tell you in your face, Man, why dont you be honest and just admit that youre stingy? Once in Spain in 1980 I had to come up with my daily contribution to the rent of the local community I had just joined and had to pioneer and open up new singing contacts in a town where I had just tried to do so a few days earlier with a partner to no avail. I was pretty desperate. God likes us to get desperate sometimes. So I prayed, and I received that verse. Sure enough, at the end of the night my pockets were bursting with cash, and I had been blessed with 15 times the amount I needed. He had not forsaken me. The funny thing is, though, that no matter how often these miracles happen, you always tend to forget them, and as soon as the due date for the rent is in sight and the cash is not around, nor any gig on the

schedule that promises to bring it in, one starts wondering and whining again, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me? Its like that film 50 First Dates, in which a girl with extreme memory loss had to be wooed each day anew by her lover. So I decided to write down this months miracle while its happening, to make sure I wont forget it next time: On Monday we somehow realized that we had the money for our utilities bill (water and electricity) and so transferred that money, leaving us at zero: Welcome to Rock Bottom Club! We still had to come up with our rent, though. This was a job for Super-God. But we knew we had to do our part, too. So we decided to follow up on some contacts and spent about an hour witnessing to the owner of a local gravestone company, who seemed thankful that we brought a little light into his confusion. Thanks, he said! One never knows what to believe anymore these days. When we wanted to move on, we realized we werent going to get very far with our summer tires in the snow, So we turned around, stopped by a junkyard in the nearby Swiss town of Schaffhausen, and the owner donated 4 pretty decent winter tires, which Sparkles, my better half and also the better mechanic between the two of us, mounted the next morning at a friends place who owns the local Toyota garage. On that day we couldnt go witnessing because I had a guitar pupil coming in and our daughter had school theater rehearsals, meaning we had to stay with our dog, so our adventure continued on Wednesday. We didnt get very far that day before I felt like I needed a coffee as we walked through the closest larger size town. So we stopped at a restaurant whose owner Sparkles knew and who might donate a coffee since we were still broke We showed the owner lady our new Christmas CD and were going to leave it for her to listen to. But she didnt want to let us go without paying for it, and in the process also bought two more of our CDs for her son. We had just become richer by the sum of one sixth of our rent. On our way home we passed by another restaurant Sparkles knew and the owner lady said she had just been thinking about her. She also gladly took a Christmas CD and gave us a bottle of Uruguayan wine on top of it On Thursdays we have a small prison ministry in a German town thats about 40 km from our place where we visit and sing for a group of 5 to 10 prisoners. On our way there we passed by a gas station belonging to a very sweet couple who had called earlier this week saying that they would like to have our Christmas CD (we had sent out an email on Monday attaching one of the best songs from it, something well keep doing until Christmas), and so they gave us another donation that brought us a bit closer to the

full amount of our due rent, along with a Swiss highway vignette (a yearly sticker you need on your car in order to be able to use Swiss highways). When we returned home later that evening, another person had bought our Christmas CD online, and we were slooowly but surely getting toward about half our rent. This morning, Sparkles went to visit a friend she sees regularly, and he just so happened to be inspired to help us with another sixth of our rent, plus a new 4 GB USB stick smaller than a finger nail (hes a shop owner) Then in the afternoon some unexpected visitors came: a very sweet couple from a nearby Swiss division of our faith community stormed in unannounced and said they wanted to leave us a gift, which turned out to be yet another third of our rent. There is a God, and He loves us. Finally, (after a break of about a year or so), Sparks and I grabbed our guitar and took it to some Restaurants we had played in when we had hit previous dry spells. The last few times had been another example of when the magic doesnt work. But tonight it did. The rent was in! And when we got home we found out that another sweet couple from our Family had sent us another generous donation in appreciation of our German albums which weve made available for free download, and now were just about able to pay our upcoming health insurance bill, too. Of course, we know people who have testimonies of how God supplied hundreds of thousands of Euros or dollars for them, and these are probably easier to remember than those little miracles that keep us going and prove to us over and over again that He loves us and wont forsake us, in spite of the mess we are. Perhaps thats why I just cant bring myself to believe that Hes just supposed to have flipped a switch to turn on the evolutionary machinery and then headed for the highlands to leave us evolving and fending for ourselves. Either Gods philosophy is survival of the fittest, or The meek shall inherit the earth it can hardly be both. Well, if you would like to become part of the continuing miracle of our simple faith life, youll find the donate button on our site, so feel free. Rest assured that every small gift will be genuinely appreciated. And if you should not yet have experienced personally that God is not too far away or too busy to help you make it through your financial dry periods, perhaps our little testimony managed to encourage you. If He did it for us, theres no doubt Hell do it for you.

Power Corrupts!

December 12, 2009 If there is one conclusion that has to be drawn from not only my personal experiences, but also that of others with different backgrounds, stories and faiths, it is that power inevitably, and seemingly without exception, corrupts those who are ushered into it. In some cases the corruption is manifested in the obvious ways of dictatorial and tyrannical behavior and abuse of their position for their own personal benefit. With others, the corruption takes place in the far more subtle way of compromise with the status quo of the silent majority in order to preserve the position: Former convictions and beliefs are being compromised for the sake of personal security and preservation of position and power. While this may not be any great revelation, but simply an observation, there are implications related to this phenomenon, concerning the history of Christendom or Christianity per se, that only occurred to me in that shape last night: Another aspect of the vast difference between Christianity in the years ranging from 30 A.D. until 313, in which the Roman emperor Constantine declared it to be okay for anyone to be a Christian, and its role in the history that followed. Before Christianity became officially recognized, it was actually dangerous to be a Christian. Anyone professing to be a Christian for the first 3 centuries of the existence of that faith was daily risking their lives by adhering to the teachings of Jesus. They were members of an ill-reputed sect (Acts 28:22), and the penalty for membership was often no less than a cruel public execution.

It was guaranteed back then, that anyone who would hold on to that faith until death, would also receive the promised crown of life (Rev.2:10). Paul even went as far as saying that one could not really be a Christian without suffering persecution (2Tim.3:12). And for nearly 3 centuries, the enemies of Christ tried to stomp out this new religion until Satan finally must have realized that it was useless, and a new tactic occurred to him: If you cant lickem, joinem! Within a few relatively short years, Christianity became something totally different, if not in some cases the actual opposite of what it had been until then. The formerly persecuted sect became the official state religion, and the greatest proof in history of that sad fact and observation as stated above: power corrupts. Religious minorities of often simply other variations of the Christian faith that didnt adhere to all the countless new dogmas and traditions of the Roman Catholic church that were not found in the original teachings of Christ were persecuted with the same cruelty by their brethren that their predecessors had experienced at the hands of the Romans. To be a Christian from then on meant to be one of the in-crowd, part of the established majority, not a sufferer of persecution for his faith, but often a persecutor of others of different faiths. To be a Christian now meant something completely different than what it had meant for the original Christians of the first 3 centuries. To remain a believer until their dying day simply meant to be enjoying the privileges of power and status of the rest of societys hotshots, barely deserving the crown of life Jesus had promised to those who were going to bear persecution and slander for His sake until their dying day. Of course, there have been numerous exceptions of outstanding Christians who did not conform to the status quo of the new officially recognized version of their faith, who left their home countries in order to fulfill Christs commandment to go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature, often to be persecuted and martyred there by the very souls they were trying to save. But as for the vast body of what was hence called Christendom, it went on to become the single greatest reason why a large percentage of seeking, honest minds and good people refuse to believe in a God Who would have fathered and initiated such a religion. The official representatives of Christianity became those who defied the command among many others of Christ to judge not that ye be not judged (Mt.7:1), and created the brand of religious bigotry Paul addresses in the 2nd chapter of Romans, summarized by the verdict: The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you, as it is written (Rom.2:24). Of course, its natural to want to avoid persecution. Its natural to want to blend in and be accepted, accumulate recognition, to want to be popular. But it can also be dangerous, because if the sort of convictions are being lost in the process that once made you stand out and apart from the norm and made you the salt of the earth, then what did all the popularity in the world get you? Its normal and only human to want to reign in the here and now, as well as there and then. But is it realistic? Arent those who are promised to reign with Him those who suffer with Him (2Tim.2:12)? Isnt it so that theres no rose without a thorn, no crown without a cross?

Isnt it still so that the path unto life is narrow, and few there be that find it (Mt.7:14)? That there is no restraint to the LORD to save by many or by few, (1Sam.14:6) in other words, God still stubbornly refuses to be impressed by numbers? - And that the world is still waiting for people to really make a difference and resemble the way Jesus and His disciples truly lived, and refuse to let power corrupt them? Just a few thoughts to take with you on your way up to the top of the hill

Welcome to the New Dark Ages!

December 16, 2009

There are still furious voices for the truth around, Hallelujah! And one of them is Justin Raimondo of Antiwar.com who just inspired this post with his piece on The Taxi Driver Who Drove Us to War. Mind you, in our age of supposed enlightenment and nearly blinding illumination, up here on the peak of Evolution in the 21st Century, some of what these voices for truth like Raimondo have to say isnt always exactly popular, and perhaps at times downright politically incorrect. After all, he dares to insinuate at the end of his article that we are headed for a new set of Dark Ages, instead of the long heralded New Age of blissful New World Order, enlightenment and peace and happiness for everyone. And now, isnt that just the type of stuff we all dread to hear! We want news of happiness and sunshine, of Nobel peace prize winning presidents and starlets turning filthy rich over night, and tales of long lasting plenty and opulence for all. After all, dont we deserve it? - For like having made it all the way to the frosty ol peak of Mt. Evolute? Maybe so.

But maybe not so. Well, I dont have to tell you why I liked that article, since any of the handful of readers of this blog know by now that my world view would rightly grant me the title Mr. Bad News (since Dr. Doom is already taken), and when I look around, I can only confirm Mr. Raimondos observation: Smells like Dark Ages. Am I a pessimist? Perhaps. But then, if you know me, Im also very optimistic when it comes to the ultimate destiny of our home planet. I know were in good hands. The problem is, Good Hands also has a mouth, and His prognosis only confirms the Dark Ages forecast. So, Im not really as much of a pessimist as Im simply a believer in a different Source of information than all those false prophets of peace and fair-weather-happily-ever-after. A much more reliable Source, as far as my personal experiences are concerned To put it bluntly: eventually, it seems as if sooner or later, at some point in time, some of us are probably going to die. (This may come as a shock, but cheer up, heres the good news:) The good news is, that it may turn out to be not all too bad in case we should. And heres why: According to Dinesh DSouza, the evidence for a life after death is sufficient to enable him to safely make the statement that it is both reasonable and good for us to believe in such. Again, my personal Source of information has been confirming that statement and observation since just about forever. So, cheer up! Things could be worse. And they probably will be, but only in order to get a lot better. What is there to be grumpy about when the worst thing that could possibly happen to you (as in kicking the bucket) is simultaneously probably the best thing that could possibly happen to you? Unless perhaps youre on the list of those who are working so feverishly on converting our former paradise into hell on earth for a good lot of us And you cant evade reaping what youve sown.

(But then youre not exactly a likely candidate for reading this blog, either, so I dont have to worry about you.) For the rest of us, its Bring on the night! Because thats what it will take in order to bring a New Dawn for real. Again, the bad news about our new Dark Age is: its real, and its going to be bad. I mean really bad: the worst ever. The good new is: its not going to be a very long Dark Age this time around, at all, because our Friend in Charge promised Hes going to even shorten that time for us. So, the proper term for whats expecting us might be: A Super-Dark Mini-Age. That doesnt sound all that bad anymore, does it? So hows that for an amateur optimist? Am I doing good, or what? And always keep your focus on whats coming after it! Its going to be well worth the pain in the behind that our politicians are currently bestowing upon us. Happy Ending guaranteed! Just be sure you only pack the essential for the journey ahead. Travel lite! is the slogan of the hour: Whether its Jesus or the Inquisition coming for you, you most likely wont be able to take your furniture with you!

Sunday Morning Truths

December 16, 2009

Contrary to popular religion, manifested in the same style as rock-festivals or sports events where masses gather together in arenas to do things for a few hours that they wouldnt be caught dead doing anywhere else, like praise the Lord & shout Hallelujah, Jesus said that the path of truth wasnt going to be a thing for the masses, but rather that there were few who would even find it, and that many were called and few chosen. Nothing has changed about that, as far as I have experienced, because the vast majority actually chooses to reject the truth when they hear it. The truth, as in, how we are really supposed to serve God, namely by going out to find those who havent found Him yet, instead of letting it all hang out in front of all our fellow believers on Sundays and show off how saintly we are. Why Im still addressing this point? Because I keep experiencing it: People coming to us, claiming that theyre looking for the truth, but when they actually hear it, they go, But what I want is a place where I can get together on Sundays and confess my sins and sing a few songs etc. So much for looking for the truth The truth, as in actually acting out your faith 7 days a week, praising and worshiping the Lord anytime and anywhere and helping others to do the same sounds much too unappealing for those who are comfortable with the Sunday-mornings-religion-truth that was fabricated over the past 17 centuries. Comfortable and delicious truths are much more elaborately produced than those slap-in-the-face sort of truths that some Savior just comes around and slings around our ears, saying Take it or leave it!

Accepted and popular, politically correct truths go out of their way to make it easy for people: You dont have to do all that hard stuff the Boss said to do: you dont actually have to forsake your belongings to live communally or tell anyone else what you believe. Why should you, when just singing some songs together and listening to a sermon can be such a comfortable replacement? You know, the world isnt really that bad, and they dont need Jesus all hat badly, and if they want Him, they can come to our church. As for the rest of some of them, well, its not really our fault if they dont come You know, there really isnt room in Heaven for all of them, anyway So, dont worry Zzzzzzzzz Zzzzzzzzz Zzzzzzz. In my opinion, what the world doesnt need is just one more religious outfit practicing their faith in the conventional lets get together once a week style. Not as badly as it needs just a handful of people really meaning business for the Lord, who when they say they really want to do something mean something other than just that: Lets form another group and get together once a week. Imagine you were running for president and the folks you hired to lead your election campaign only got together for an hour or two a week to talk about how they were going to get you elected, instead of taking to the streets with posters and fliers and talking to folks to convince them of what a cool dude you are. Well, thats how Jesus must feel. It seems to be so much easier to rally behind some politician who breaks his promises faster than he can make them, than behind the only One Who actually keeps His Word. The conclusion: Liars are more popular. And whatever is popular rules, right? Errrr. What was that stuff again about few there be that find it?

Meet My New Friend Malcolm Muggeridge

December 29, 2009

The dead seem to be more alive than the living these days. At least it seems to me that Im finding more that I can wholeheartedly agree with among the writings of the deceased than among the ceaseless, ever more superficial and pseudo-intelligent babble of the large bulk of my contemporaries. Well, as a person who never had a problem with life after death, and ever more evidence surging for it, including some refreshing accounts of how the dead seem to be alive and kicking and joyously communicating with those left behind on this side of the veil, Im not too shocked. Although, who wouldnt wish he had a few more friends we can actually feel and see? But then its hard to come across minds even remotely comparable to some of those who dared to make a difference in the decades and centuries gone by minds like that of Malcolm Muggeridge, whom I only recently discovered and find out Im having more in common with than most of my living acquaintances. I doubt, for instance, if I would find among the living anyone able to put into words as appropriately and eloquently my very own opinion on the topic of education as he did in his book Jesus Rediscovered: Education, the great mumbo-jumbo and fraud of the age, purports to equip us to live, and is prescribed as a universal remedy for everything, from juvenile delinquency to premature senility. For the most part, it only serves to enlarge stupidity, inflate conceit, enhance credulity and put those subjected to it, at the mercy of brain-washers with printing presses, radio and television at their disposal. The most powerful instrument of all in bringing about the erosion of our civilization was none other than the public education system set up with such high hopes and at so great expense precisely to sustain it. Or on the topic of science:

We are perfectly capable of believing other things intrinsically as improbable as Christs incarnation. Towards any kind of scientific mumbojumbo we display a credulity which must be the envy of African witch-doctors. While we shy away with contumely from the account of the creation in the Book of Genesis, we are probably ready to assent to any rigmarole by a Professor Hoyle about how matter came to be, provided it is dished up in the requisite jargon and associated, however obliquely, with what we conceive to be facts. I suppose every age has its own particular fantasy. Ours is science. A seventeenth-century man like Pascal, though himself a mathematician and scientist of genius, found it quite ridiculous that anyone should suppose that rational processes could lead to any ultimate conclusions about life, but easily accepted the authority of the Scriptures. With us it is the other way round. Or organized religion (aka Churchianity): Professing Christians and ostensibly Christian societies and institutions have by no means been true to the cross and what it signified, especially today when the nominally Christian part of the world is foremost in worship of the Gross National Productour Golden Calfand in pursuit of happiness in the guise of sensual pleasure. Yet there the cross still is, propounding its unmistakable denunciation of this world and of the things of this world. The way I came across my new heavenly friend was by means of one of his quotes on evolution, to which, of course, I also couldnt agree more: I myself am convinced that the theory of evolution, especially the extent to which its been applied, will be one of the great jokes in the history books in the future. Posterity will marvel that so very flimsy and dubious an hypothesis could be accepted with the incredible credulity that it has. I think I spoke to you before about this age as one of the most credulous in history, and I would include evolution as an example. Since there are such wonderful aspects awaiting someone like me in the afterlife, of finally actually meeting folks on the same weird wavelength as mine, I can only agree with his following statement as well: As I do not believe that earthly life can bring any lasting satisfaction, the prospect of death holds no terrors. To round off this train of thoughts, Ill end this with a quote from wee little me: When even that which is considered the worst that can possibly happen to a person death turns out to actually be the best that can possibly happen, then what is there to fear? What is there to lose? (April 20, 2008) That through death He might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; and deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage (Hebrews 2:14, 15).

Supernaturally Spiritual
December 29, 2009

God is a Spirit, Jesus told the Samaritan woman at the well. That is something a lot of people have a problem with: spirits. Just because it isnt visible, it must be inferior (or scary). We only allow things we can see to impress us, even if theyre totally unreal, like most of the special effects we see in the movies. As long as it can be seen, it impresses us. Anything thats not seen, immediately receives the label inferior, if not irrelevant. Perhaps if we exchange the word spirit for supernatural, though, we might get a little bit more attention. Pretty much everyone is somewhat interested in the supernatural, even if they have no interest whatsoever in spirits. Spirits are stuff for stories they used to scare kids with in the olden days. Supernatural is more like now youre talking, because the stuff they watch on TV deals a lot with those things. In reality, spiritual and supernatural is one and the same thing. Everything that cannot be explained in natural, physical terms stems from a realm that is beyond our natural realm we have thus far been able to observe, which is the spirit realm, and everything supernatural stems from the spirit world of course, both sides, good and evil. Its just that by avoiding the term spirits we can avoid the biblical and conventional aspect of the supernatural. Just as he did with sex, astrology and a bunch of other things, the devil would like to claim the domain of the supernatural exclusively for himself, which he unfortunately manages to a large extent because of peoples (and particularly Christians) fear of the supernatural. C. S. Lewis wrote in his book Miracles, the following: Only Supernaturalists really see Nature. You must go a little away from her, and then turn round, and look back. Then at last the true landscape will become visible. You must have tasted, however briefly, the

pure water from beyond the world before you can be distinctly conscious of the hot, salty tang of Natures current. To treat her as God, or as Everything, is to lose the whole pith and pleasure of her. Come out, look back, and then you will see Thats in essence the point Im trying to make with my ongoing eBook project The Deeper Meaning of Everything: that there is something more to see in nature than meets the eye, the handwriting and footprint of the supernatural, (that which we dare not call spiritual) of God.

The Carpet Cutters that Killed Capitalism

December 30, 2009

Where would we be without the press to tell us (and remind us over and over again of) what we are to believe? In the Spiegel article What the World Can Learn from 10 Years of Excesses three diligent journalists worked hard to save us all from the effort of using our own overcapacitated brains and wrapped up the past decade for us in a nutshell, joining many other writers from probably every other major newspaper around the world. I suppose that in order to keep their job, a journalist in the 21st century must simply stick to the one great commandment: Thou shalt uphold the official version of 9/11, since that is obviously what each of those wrap-ups of the decade portray. Only the Spiegel has given it a special little twist by saying that the carpet-cutter-wielding radical Islamists who allegedly pulled 9/11 also brought down Capitalism per se.

Not only that, but the great 19th century German Jewish prophet Karl Marx even prophesied their heroic deed. I guess were really going to have to spank those naughty Muslims butts now that its becoming known that not only did their envoys bring down the Twin Towers, but also the sacred cow of Capitalism herself. Other people make resolutions for the new year on December 31st, we pick a specific Bible verse as a guiding motif for the coming twelve months. Mine for 2010 will be Mark 12:2. For there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; neither hid, that shall not be known. It just thrills me, that the Creator of Heaven and earth should have given us a Promise that some day whether near or far were going to be told the truth for a change after all this never-ending hogwash from an army of fairy-tale makers. Since I dont believe in coincidence, Im beginning to wonder about a deeper significance to the name Spiegel (=mirror) this reflector of truth has chosen as its trademark, and am immediately reminded of Don Quixotes battle with the knight of mirrors, who finally brought Quixote back to his senses with his version of reality, heralding the sad ending of the story. Whats the lesson to be learned from this? Dont listen to the tales of the Knight of Mirrors if you want to live a happy life, because what he may sell you as reality may turn out to be another howbeit extremely well written fairytale spun on behalf of the darker powers that be.

Big Fakes Vs. The Real Thing

January 3, 2010

During the last few weeks Ive been confronted extensively with the issue of Mormonism, since weve had a frequent visitor who, although excommunicated from the official Mormon church, still considers himself a Mormon. Its usually not my thing to blast any cults other than the big established ones, but all Ive learned in the past few days about Mormonism puts established Christianity in a different light for me, as Ive had to

realize that there are apparently yet far greater evils and deceptions than the mainstream of organized religion. Thus far I had considered Mormons to be fellow Christians with slightly different views and doctrines, but after hours of research and investigation it turns out that its one big fake and counterfeit concoction of true Christian beliefs, to the extent where I doubt that being a Mormon actually does not necessarily resemble a true believer at all. Its sad when you realize that over 2 millions brothers and sisters you thought you had dont belong to the same family, after all, but then theres a lot of sad things happening in the world as it is Its always unbelievable to what lengths the Devil goes in order to deceive the children of men. Its like that infamous Hitler quote that has sometimes been used in connection with Evolution: If you are going to tell a lie, make it such a big one that people wont dare to think you would have such a nerve or to that extent, but it is, after all, what the Devil is best at: telling lies and concocting illusions. Usually I try to look at the things I have in common with believers from other denominations or groups, but in this case Im finding out that there are opposing foundations, and that while I consider myself a definite seeker of truth, Mormonism turns out to fall into the category of big time deception. Whats interesting is that Mormons seem to have extraordinarily well working family lives to speak in favor of their religion, while the Jesus of the Gospels prophesied that true followers of His would be at variance with their Family members, and that a mans foes shall be they of his own household, that children would betray their parents to the authorities, and that His true Family were not necessarily His own flesh and blood relatives The properly functioning world of the Mormons does not coincide with the often trying life of true Christian disciples. One might ask: Why should Christians or true believers have more troubles than those who have the god of this temporal world on their side? Well, perhaps precisely because they dont have the blessings of that very god who offered Jesus all the riches and power in the world when he tempted him, but instead, have him as their enemy, just like Jesus. Where Satan would normally seek to cause division among true believers, he simply leaves those alone that he knows secretly belong to him already. A large part of the faith Mormons have in their religion seems to stem from the emotional, supernatural (spiritual) experiences they have during their ceremonies, such as our friend also testifies of, being certain that they could not just have been illusions. But if one delves into the topic of mind control and has experienced how just about any well-made Hollywood movie can bring about deep emotional experiences, and then peeks into the history of Mormonism and finds the same organizations at their basis that finance the global mass deception and manipulation that simply has been going on for the past century and a half, it becomes evident that the greatest liar of all times just happens to have won a lot of recruits for his cause

And if you can get prosperity and family peace along with it, then Mormonism seems to be just a good religion to get for 10% of your income unless, what youre looking for, after all, is the real thing. Now, Im not going to try to sell anybody any church, organization or group of people living on this earth right now as the sole, total and absolute real thing, but if you know the real Jesus from the New Testament, and you know your Bible, then you know youve got the Real Thing. And Im afraid one way of finding out what the real things is, for many people involves finding out what it aint, and when it comes to Mormonism, I agree with the colored lady who was asked by her preacher how in the world she thought she could tell what the unction was and replied, I may not know when it am, but I sure know when it aint The same applies to the Jehovahs Witnesses, by the way, according to whose official teachings, Jesus is merely the incarnation of the archangel Michael, and there is no life after death. In Mormon mythology (theology would probably be the wrong term), Jesus is the brother of Lucifer, not the Beginning of the creation of God, much less His only begotten Son, nor the One by Whom all things were created. According to Fritz Springmeier and David Icke, both (JW & LDS) were funded in their beginnings by Illuminati families, and it seems as if the intention was to artificially create counterfeit versions of Christianity in which the deity and thus divine authority of Jesus was undermined: hollow shells of some resemblance of Christian spirituality without its real power. In one, the letter of the law is prevalent, and spiritual experience totally rejected, in the other, the proof of its authenticity is based on spiritual experiences of such is the sad conclusion to which Ive come personally deceptive, demonic origin. Without the divinity of Jesus, there is no valid blood atonement, and thus, no salvation from sin (which is the reason why multiple additional rules need to be kept in these self-made religions in order to ensure the attainment of any hopes for the afterlife). The result is, lo, another works religion in the fashion of Cains example, as opposed to the gift and grace and love of God that in my opinion is the only faith worthy of passing on to anybody else: the relief of burdens, instead of yet another burden in itself. Man-made works-religions are not a solution, but merely part of the problem; and its good and important to know which is which. More video documentation on the topic

The God Journey

January 5, 2010

I think its about time for a post about the God Journey, in my opinion one of the hottest moves of God on earth right now. The way we got wind of it was in such a way that you just know that it couldnt possibly have been coincidence. Geographically speaking, were pretty much situated right in the middle of the boonies. And the chances that some American speaker on spirituality should seriously arouse our interest and at the same time visit our neighborhood arent exactly high. Yet about 2 years ago, some very close Christian friends of ours invited us to tug along to hear somebody named Wayne Jacobsen speak, whom we had never heard of, but who was supposed to have written a book that was going quite well. I couldnt go, but my better half did, and when she came back, she was pleasantly surprised about the fact that this guy (Wayne) had actually been talking about getting out of the churches. Curious, we checked out his website, downloaded his book and you can find the download link to that book one of the best I ever read in the sidebar of this blog ever since. Every now and then I check out TheGodJourney.com, a website on which Wayne Jacobsen presents regular podcasts along with his friend Brad Cummings, and I listen to some of their stuff, and every time I go, awesome! Last week I listened to their podcast entitled, Its About Jesus and once again, I thought awesome! and I felt more inspired about what I had just heard than I had been for a while, so I decided to listen to some more. In fact, I started downloading the whole caboodle of podcasts and to listen to them from the beginning. Its not that I was looking for any new source of spirituality of soul food, but I felt as if God was drawing me toward this. Strangely enough, He had been doing similar things in my life previously and drawing my attention toward comparatively awkward sources of inspiration, such as the Franciscan writer Richard Rohr (Can anything good come out of the Catholic church?), or, as I mentioned recently, Malcolm Muggeridge, among others.

The neat thing is when you find truths that God has shown you confirmed by different sources: brothers and sisters around the world; and you find that Hes doing and showing the very same things in the lives of others that Hes doing in your own. And one of the truths I find reflected in Wayne and Brads talks, for instance, is that it is Jesus building His church, His Ecclesia, His living body of called-out ones from among all sorts of different areas and walks of life, and not we ourselves. In other words, Gods part of the action is not only far greater than what we sometimes give Him credit for, or than what some people would grant Him the permission for, not only greater than anything we could ever possibly imagine, but it is, in fact, lo and behold, also greater than the supposedly so important part that we are doing. And that may come as quite a shock to some of us who perceive themselves as the greater doers. Its an old truth that in theory Ive grown up with: Let go and let God; but which has taken me decades to actually start putting into practice. Some of the stuff theyre saying Ive been taught for decades. But I guess its one of the jobs of the Holy Spirit to bring all these things to our remembrance even if it is via unexpected sources sometimes Coincidentally, (if there ever was such a thing), the podcast I was listening to today was all about the emotional hype that can be produced during religious happenings (in this case it was about the death of Pope John Paul II a few years ago), and how that can sometimes be a good thing in some peoples lives, but it can also be quite misleading, all of which sort of goes hand in hand with my recent lessons I learned from my brush with Mormonism Youll find a lot of similarities between some of the thoughts expressed in this blog over the years, and those shared on the God Journey, like the idea of taking God out of the box we sometimes like to stick Him in: our church, our group, our self-made confines for Him and His capabilities that we make up in our own minds As long as we think our box is IT, we actually fail to see Him, and we forget that all we really are is little diamonds of dust, and that He is the light that makes us shine. How long has it been since youve seen sunshine in your brothers eyes? Well, Im afraid the only way were going to get back that shine is by focusing on the light, not by feverishly trying to shine in our own strength. For passing on a bit of their shine and light of the experience of what theyve learned in their own lives and on their journey with God, I would like to thank Wayne and Brad Thanks guys, for being (part of) the Real Thing!

No Sympathy for the Devil

January 6, 2010

Some or even most people, perhaps, are having a hard time believing that the Devil could be real. They may even believe in God, or a god or some sort of divinity, but the Devil? Naah! With me, its the other way around. As far as Im concerned, the existence of the Devil is so overwhelmingly evident in his workings in the minds of mankind and the resulting actions, I cannot help but believe in God and the biblical account of history, because its the only explanation of the senselessness all around us that makes sense. In order to understand whats going on all around us, one needs to have an understanding of how the Devil operates, and as Paul admonishes us, not be ignorant of his devices. One thing we know about him is that hes a liar, and if we dont come to the realization that some of the things were being told are downright and blatant lies, nothing makes sense. We also know that hes the imitator of God. If God wants us to voluntarily learn to acknowledge that we depend on Him (just for trivial little things such as the air we breathe, every bite of food and sip of water, etc.), then the Devil demands that we adhere to his system of dependence on him and his cronies, which is manifested in his delightful theme of, work, work, work, so you can pay bills, bills, bills. (Who else but the Devil could have ever cooked up such a stinking, boring little game?) Everything God does, the Devil tries too, except that the way he does it sucks. Which is probably precisely the reason why God will finally have to intervene after only 3 1/2 years of the Devils ultimate kingdom on earth in order to save His creation from total destruction. The Devil is the absolute champion when it comes to making a mess out of everything. Accordingly, it is no wonder that the same happens visibly in areas of our daily life, such as the economy or the environment, if you take a look at the bloaks who are in charge of it: They follow in their masters footsteps, in which lie and deceit are the primary order, and the result is the ever-present fruit of Satans efforts since the beginning of time: hoodlum. You can tell Im no big friend of the Devil, nor do I manage to eke out an awful lot of sympathy for him.

As far as Im concerned, the sooner he gets his long-needed kick in the behind, the better off were all going to be. But Im afraid were going to have to wait a little longer in order to see the worst of him yet, because only then will the lesson be completed that were supposed to draw from this act entitled Ye shall be as gods. You can never appreciate the Real Thing until youve had a dose of the big fake, along with the billions of little fakelets running around

In the Beginning, the Word. In the End???

January 18, 2010 by mcdozer

According to this article from England, alas, it is looking bleak for the future of the English language, or perhaps, language per se If in the beginning was the Word (Logos), in other words, as the German Creation Scientist Werner Gitt put it, Information, then it looks as if once again, the theory of Evolution is turning out to be the biggest pile of goose dump ever sold to humanity as fact, since what is actually happening is evidently the opposite : the decline of communication and the very stuff that was necessary to get the ball of Creation rolling: information.

Its not that there isnt any exchange of words happening, and to some degree, what one might still call information of sorts, its just that the actual amount of valid information in whats being said is rapidly racing toward the zero mark, and the quality, as we have observed with so many other things in our times, such as even our fruits and vegetables, and even the dirt in which theyre grown, is decreasing with shocking speed. No wonder scientists think theyre gods. Compared to the average IQ of the media-fabricated zombies all around them, it must be frighteningly easy to fall for the temptation of deeming oneself omniscient Im not denying that there are folks who dont follow the trend and decline, but, ladies and gentlemen, tell me, please, whats it all worth if youre as smart as Einstein, but the System has it all rigged up to create blank minds in the future citizens of this globe? And while were all so infatuated with our own cleverness, we idly stand by as our kids are being turned into intellectual zeros After all, we kid ourselves, Evolutions going to take care of it! Its the undefeatable law of, Were all going to get smarter, no matter what, because were all evolving, see? (I wish Ricky Gervais would have the guts and brains to take the piss out of his fellow evolutionists someday, the way he does with creationists and believers of any type it would sound magnificent to hear him say a phrase like that last one before the parenthesis) I guess the Devil really must hate the concept of useful information being transferred from one place (like a brain) to another, and so his goal must be the total stupification of mankind. I know I already addressed that topic, but it never struck me like that: Perhaps the end of the world will look like this: billions of morons staring skywards, unable to utter anything remotely more sensible than Awwwwwwww. as the last few remaining folks still capable of articulating entire phrases escape from this world in the only direction left to go Its not that some people arent diabolically clever. Its just that their diabolical cleverness isnt doing anybody any good. The fruits of it are becoming plain: absolute, total, terrifying, devastating and global stupidity. I know that may sound a bit mean, but you see, I have to take advantage of the golden opportunity to spell out these words before the majority of our population are going to be left clueless as to their meaning Im not saying that one has to be smart in order to be good. Not necessarily. One can be wise by being simple. But they have to be wise enough to adhere to the proper type of input. And while everybodys feeding on input thats supposed to make them believe that theyre smarter than anybody else who ever walked this earth, their offspring and younger peers are slowly being transformed into beings that if the trend continues will not be able to communicate properly with the oh-so-smart but unceasingly aging rest of us. So, something has got to be wrong about our way of thinking: that fable of the ever-mutating super-monkey. Some say its all religions fault that folks are becoming so dumb. I agree. But its more likely the religion of Evolution that is causing the problem. Because even the most devout Christian has been

affected to some degree by that bug of automatic superiority because of the underlying dogma that were supposedly developing into something better, higher and smarter all the time. Youve got to be outrageously insane to actually take notice of the opposite happening. Were being constantly told and drilled to believe that the exact opposite is happening of what is actually and in reality taking place, and the illusion is made perfect by ever increasing special effects in the movies, ever fancier technological gimmicks, and an ever increasing perfection of the outward shell of our System, along with the perfectly styled and surgically altered appearances of each individual. When all the while something is rotting inside. No wonder people are so much into horror movies these days. Theres some real bad voodoo going on, and its turning everything into ever more beautiful somethings on the outside, while the inside is becoming uglier by the minute, somewhat like Oscar Wildes character Dorian Gray. Maybe Oscar was onto something

The Gospel of Mammon

February 1, 2010 by mcdozer

Jesus didnt have to be a loser. He could have been a millionaire. If he would have just had enough sense, entrepreneurship, businessmanship, and a microscopical fraction of the greed that drives probably 99.9% percent of His professing modern followers, and would have charged a dime for each fish sandwich He so miraculously manufactured and doled out by the thousands, or if He would have had the brains to charge just a tiny percentage of the gain from the sales of the fishes He helped others to catch, or a small fee for His countless healing miracles.

But the Dude just didnt have it in Him. You wouldnt call it dumb, perhaps just a little ignorant. After all, His kind way back 2000 years ago hadnt evolved yet into the highly sophisticated specimen that know how to make a buck out of anything even diminishing the population, instead of being so foolish as to heal anyone and thus slow down the process of eliminating one more superfluous eater and breather Talking about the Evolution of Christendom: Jesus didnt have a clue about the fact that you need a car you paid at least a five digit amount in dollars, Euros or Swiss Francs for, in order to be a half-way decent sample of His religion, or in order to be able to just stand to live with yourself, for that matter. His policy of freely ye have received, also freely give was typically blue-eyed (and sickeningly idealistic) for His slightly post-Neanderthal stage in the Evolution of mankind. He may have gotten the stone of Christianity rolling, but certainly His 21st century followers are smarter than to avail themselves of any of His suicidal tactics that just showed you were that sort of loser-streak lands you: up on a hill of shame with the outcasts and the doom of financial and social bankruptcy. In fact, its petty good Hes not around anymore, since His antics of the sort like kicking out the decent folks with brains trying to properly market their religion from the temple would not really get us very far with the spreading of our type of gospel, in the 21st century. Lets face it: Jesus didnt know anything about PR, and when it comes down to market assessment, His credentials equal near zero. I mean, the guy hung out with losers, when everybody knows that the rich are the most Gospel-neglected stratum of society. Well, they were, up until about 4 decades ago, when we stopped preaching to the poor and instead made it our vocation to bend over backwards to shove the gospel of prosperity for the umpteenth time down the throats of those who are perhaps not wildly willing, but at least able to pay for it what we demand in order to finance our 21st century Christian life-style. Why preach to millions of strangers and foreigners who really need Jesus, when you can just drone on and on to the same old neighborhood forever that you can be sure have what you need, right? The parable of the lost sheep in the 21st century sounds a little bit like this: Forget about the 99 who dont have any money anyway and look for the one super rich dude who can really help you spread our gospel the proper way: with the proper kind of cars, the proper kind of laptops and all the ado that goes with preaching the gospel of our times, the gospel of the only true god the majority of Westerners ever served. No wonder God is a jealous God. Because pretty much all His chicks are totally gaga about this other dude: the guy with the flashy Rolex, the perfect teeth and sparkling red Porsche, the sole and one true conqueror of all the hearts of what has the audacity to call itself Christendom far and wide: all hail, glory, honor and praise to our conquering hero, our one true lord and most sovereign ruler, Mammon! How I can tell that thats your dude? Very simply, because Jesus said, Out of the fullness of the heart, the mouth speaketh, and since just about everything in your life seems to be revolving around little

colored papers with numbers onem, and the acquisition of those little colored papers with numbers onem, and all that you would and could do if only you had more of those little colored papers with numbers onem, why, then youd finally have the time to tell anybody about Jesus Maybe Im exaggerating. But it should cause you to pause long enough to think if theres even the remote possibility that thats the impression one of your fellow humans gets of you from hearing you talk. Its not that I mind you pursuing your passion. I used to be on the same trip for decades and wonder, whenever I met anyone, How can this person be of service to me? How can they help me advance and further our good cause? imagining plush villas and mansions with swimming pools we would all live happily ever after in until Jesus comes. Its just that I do mind your treating me as less than human for having betrayed our former common goals, and for simply having stopped drooling at the sound of the word Money! Hey, I can live with it, if thats your big kick. The big question is, can you live with it, that its not mine? I know Im an embarrassment to you for driving onto your driveway in a 20 year old car that I scarcely had to eke out a four digit amount for, and if theres one thing in the world you dont understand its how on earth I can have the audacity to even survive in a crummy little house like ours. And what weirds you out the most is: how come we actually have friends that like to come over and be with us in that crummy little house? Well, the secret is that same old five-letter name that you seem to have so grossly distorted in your mind: Jesus. I mean, the real Jesus, not the, Cmon and Ill show you how to get rich quick Jesus made in Hollywood. The One Who didnt charge anyone for His sermons, His healings, not even His fish sandwiches. The One who didnt care about prestige or what the heck the rich, the fat and the pompous said. The One Who was so real, so raw, so naked, that He didnt even mind being nailed to a cross for you, full-well knowing that Youd screw the other guy a million times behind His back. The One Who was not ashamed of calling the poor, the outcasts, the little ones, the weirdos and losers His friends, because He couldnt have cared less about what the fancy hypocrites thought of Him The One Who cant wait for you to come back to your senses and love Him and see Him for Who He really is and has always been. The One Who said, In as much as you have done it unto the least (not the richest, fanciest, shiniest and most prestigious) of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me. And of Whom it is written that He is not a respecter of persons. When He looks at you, He looks at who you really are, and not that hollow shell youre artificially trying to beef up like a Christmas tree. May God have mercy and call us all back to the reality of Who He really is!

What If II (Or: Shut Up Already!)

February 1, 2010 by mcdozer

I know, the politically correct thing in more than one aspect, would be to shut up. And I could imagine that some of my brethren are praying that I would. And I have a feeling that their prayers may soon be answered, and Im just about through with what Ive got to say. But before I do, just a few more thoughts Id like to throw out there: If theres one thing I know, its that God is Love, and that He loves each one of His children beyond measure. But I also know, that part of that love includes a measure of His love that we do not always appreciate: the measure of correction. For whom the Lord loveth, He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth (Heb.12:6). And judgment begins with the house of God. All Im saying (once again) is, What if? What if in spite of His never-ending mercy upon all of us (and He knows that I need it more desperately than anyone), there is just too much wrong about the way we do things, than He could allow us to get away with? As loving and as merciful as He is, what if we, as Christians and thus His self-declared representatives, are making ourselves guilty of sins and crimes that would be a lack of love and justice on His part toward the rest of the world, if He wouldnt do anything about it? What if were not really smarter at all than Adam and Eve? Lets recall: What was their sin? The sin that got us all into this mess and got us the Devil as temporary ruler, master and god of this world, was that they believed a lie! What if we havent learned anything from that incident, and havent gotten any smarter since? What if were still allowing the serpent to tell us one fairy-tale after another, and we all go, Yeah, lets do that! like they did back then? Im thinking of one famous fairy-tale in particular, of 19 bearded bad guys with carpet-knives defying the laws of physics and bringing down 3 buildings with 2 planes at free-fall speed, allegedly crashing into

the Pentagon with another passenger plane, leaving a hole scarcely big enough for a glider to have hit it, much less any evidence or even so much as an actual photo of the aircraft A fairy-tale that has recently been repeated by every journalist with a job around the globe in their wrapup of the first decade of the millennium and has sent tens of thousands of Christian troops off to foreign lands to kill millions, supported by the prayers of the brethren back home. What if our God just so happens to love the Iraqis, Afghans, Pakistanis and Palestinians, too, that have been killed on our behalf and what if our reasons for killing them werent nearly as noble as we were told? What if God is not just going to stand by and ignore our slaughter of the innocents, and say, Tsk, tsk, how clumsy, My dears! Now take better care next time, okay? What if our God is slowly becoming sick and tired of being made the laughing stock of the rest of the world on our behalf, and there is really some actual modern relevance to that Scripture, Gods name is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you (Rom.2:24)? What if we really cannot serve God and Mammon as Jesus said? What if all those Scriptures we dont like are just as valid as the ones we always pick and constantly repeat because we like the way their sound tickles our ears? What if all those dreadful Endtime scenarios of the Book of Revelation are going to be a well-deserved reality, not only for unbelievers, but lets just assume for a moment those Scriptures really mean what they say, the Antichrist is going to wage war on the saints and obviously not talking about the Jews? What if were going to actually reap what we have sown, and the Antichrist is going to be our just dessert, for believing his fathers lies, just as it has been since the beginning? What if were not anywhere as good as we think we are, just because we call ourselves Christians? I know, God loves us, anyway, and Hell forgive. But it also says that He chastens those He loves, and that those who knew His will and did it not were going to be beaten with more stripes than those who knew it not. What if God actually means what He says? Contrary to the dude whose lies we constantly swallow, which he tells only in order to get us into trouble with God? What if God did actually expect us to use the brains He gave us? Im not trying to pretend to be some kind of teacher here. Im just a nobody asking a couple of uncomfortable questions, because what I read in the Bible and what I see the supposed followers of that Book actually do does not jibe, and it actually makes me feel very uncomfortable What if its really true that as wonderfully sweet, and loving as Jesus is, there are still those types of Christians around that make Him so sick at His stomach that He feels like vomiting them out (see Rev.3:16)? What if the Bible is actually right, and the world is not getting any better, but actually worse, including the general quality of Christians and believers?

What if the lies the Devil told in the beginning were actually fairly decent, artistic concoctions of halftruths, compared to the God-forsaken crap we swallow by the truck-loads nowadays? Maybe were not nearly as ingenious as we think just because we know how to handle a remote control or play computer games, or kill people with super-sophisticated weapons What if, in reality contrary to all that we honestly believe and think weve become more stupid than ever? I know thats not exactly positive thinking here. I know Ill never win the title, The worlds greatest optimist. But from where I stand, I see tiny shrinking islands of honesty floating on a vast, growing sea of lies, so my optimism is exclusively dedicated to my Savior and Maker, and not so much the bulk of my fellow humans, from whence mine help surely not cometh So, its probably true: the best thing in the world I can do is to finally shut up. I just hope and pray that you guys are right, and God is either totally tripping on acid, or blind and not anywhere near as pissed off about what Hes seeing as some of your fellow humans are Because if He is, and He already said that Sodom and Gomorrah were going to look better on J-Day than Jerusalem, I dont want to know the fate of some of our present day Sodoms and Gomorrahs If God is real at all, folks, He certainly couldnt be the kind of a pussy some of us seem to want to make Him, and Im afraid sooner or later Hes going to have to prove that to the world. So, sorry, for having rocked your boat this one more time. I dont know what else there is to say that could possibly get me into more trouble. I just hope youre all right and Im wrong, and we can all blissfully sleep on until our magic prince will awaken us in paradise. All I was saying is, What if not?

Spirituality Pushers
February 7, 2010 by mcdozer

(Intro: Okay, so I tried. And managed for nearly a week But I couldnt. You can tell I was still trying to keep up the politically correct style all the way through the first two paragraphs of the following post, but guess I just dont have it in me Now I know what some of those stars must feel like when they announce their umpteenth retirement from the public eye, only to celebrate a glorious comeback little later Well, at least I got a half-way politically correct blog out of it, that folks will be referred to from my website without my having to worry about their getting the shock of their lives. This blog will remain my dirty little secret between me and the insiders from now on Long live political correctness and conformity! Perhaps some other time.) One of the factors that causes an increasing amount of people to shun organized religion of all shapes and sizes is the same reason that causes some people to run away from relationships: Certain kinds of people (and religiously organized folks have a strong tendency to fall into that category) seem to be driven by an incessant urge to improve their fellow humans. No matter how happy you may be in your present situation, if your life-style differs too strongly from theirs, they simply cant live with it, but will endlessly persuade you to join them in the way theyre doing things. Their tolerance level towards people who do things differently than they is very low.

While on one hand their strong conviction about their beliefs and methods is commendable, on the other one would wish for the moment that it might dawn on them that some people might actually be called to do things differently. It has been my observation that God is into awesome variety. A variety that would probably strike some people as outrageous. Yet, as Christians, its something we need to learn, if we plan to follow the Man Who didnt care what the established members of society said or thought about Him when He associated with fallen women, the outcasts of society and constantly availed Himself of methods that had never ever been heard of before. Most of us act as if Jesus, when He said, I will build My church (ecclesia), was talking about a box, and everyone who belonged in that box was supposed to act and look exactly the same. Probably we do that because of the boxiness of our own finite minds. But lets expand our horizons a little bit: What if He wasnt talking about identical cubicles when He said, In My Fathers House there are many mansions? What if Jesus intention was to set His believers free, instead of locking them all up in one and the same sheep pen? What if He would much rather have us delight in those green pastures beside the still waters where He would lead us, instead of amassed together in a squashy fold, just waiting to be stripped of our wool? We all look down upon and rightly so, perhaps drug dealers, who sell their drugs to people, even children, that get them addicted and dependent on their merchandise. But isnt that in some ways exactly what a lot of religious people do who get people dependent on their system? Instead of just being concerned about their flocks welfare and proving this by equipping them with the right tools and weapons that will make them fit for the battle of life, they purposely seem to keep them as weak as possible and dependent on their system, eternally insecure even about basic faith issues such as salvation, which they might easily lose anytime they might stay away from their congregation for too long, or commit comparable atrocious crimes Some peoples concept of love seems to be: To love you love you means to try to make you just like me. But perhaps its supposed to be a lot more the way God the One Who is Love, after all did it: show that He accepted and loved us by having His Own Son become One of us. The sheer act of such love made us all those of us who are into love at all, that is flip so completely over Him, that we dont have to be persuaded to become like Him. We gladly will strive to do all we can to achieve that, anyway. No persuasion needed. No constant, Hey, Why dont you do it this here way, the way we do it? or You really should join our church and become more like us! If whatever you do is the Real Thing, people will automatically copy you, you wont even have to tell them much. Otherwise its like the arrogant attitude of some high ranking US Navy Officers article I read on the Homepage of the Council on Foreign Relations about two years before the Iraq war began, way before the

Bush administration ever invented the magic phrase Weapons of Mass Destruction that got the rest of the Western World into the Kill Saddam frenzy. The CFR members explained how it was the enlightened worlds duty to bring the gap nations such a Iraq in to the great big corporate family of Coca Cola and McDonalds fast food consuming better part of the World. Or the way Michael Moore put it in Stupid White Men: We need to usher them into the New World Order gently. Well, gently remaining entirely a matter of definition, of course (Since reducing a countrys population by 1.5 million might easily be questioned as, Couldnt we have done it a little more gently???). But the gist of the attitude of arrogance is the same. We think we made the Iraqis infinitely happier with our gifts of radio-active shrapnel and raping their daughters, but how do they see it? Well, and thats probably the same way a lot of people feel about organized religion Especially since the vast majority of that organized opium of the people couldnt jump on the Muslim killing band wagon fast enough. After all, the faster we get rid of those who are different, the quicker the job will be done to make everyone exactly like ourselves, and isnt that the goal? Weve seen it before: with the American Natives, or virtually any distinct ethnic group that Christianity has sent their missionaries out to, often not so much to show them the love of Christ, but to assimilate and absorb them into our belief system at gun point. Well, if we hadnt done it, they would have eaten us! is the response of some. True. We wouldnt have wanted to wind up like martyrs, like Jesus, His apostles and the Early Church for 3 centuries before we moved from the arenas into the grandstands We wanted to follow Him our own way. After all, havent we always known better than Him?

How Acceptable Is Workaholism?

February 7, 2010 by mcdozer

Ive said before that if time is money, then most people I know are dead poor. A lot of them dont have time for God, their wives, their children, much less their friends because the one thing they love above them all is their work. They say they do their work with love, but in reality, it is just that they love their work more than anything else. If they would love God, their families and friends more, believe me, they would make time for them, because we always manage to find time for whatever we deem most important. But since our work is what defines us, and us is what we love most, no matter how Christian we claim and pretend to be, the thing we love second best right after us is our work. Or work is what makes us proud of us, recognized and established members of society (aka the System) and day by day, stone by stone, through our work, we build an image of ourselves that we can proudly fall down before and worship: a god we dont have to be ashamed of, because we know where its coming from: we have erected it with our own blood, sweat and tears. No wonder the one thing this type of people hate most is a bunch of hippies who come along to tell them that Jesus said that you cannot serve God and Mammon, Look at the lilies of the field, and the birds, etc Grrrr!!! Enough of that!!! Shut up already, or Ill kill you!!! Of course, we do it, because we want to look responsible. Its your duty as head of a family, to make sure that you provide for your family! Sure, but thats the same gospel the heathen preach, Jesus said. Anyone can do that! You dont have to call yourself a Christian in order to do that! But, of course, you want to get the best of both worlds, the here and now, the worship of the flesh and ego, and a big fat crown and reward in Heaven for everyone to see just what a good, responsible worker you were

After all, What if everybody would preach the Gospel? We cant all live like you! We cant all forsake all and go into the world and follow Jesus Our whole beautiful System would collapse! Everybody would laugh at us! Especially the Devil! Well, I dont think so. In fact, I think theres nothing that Satan could possibly be more scared of than just 5 people on this globe pausing from their money-raking frenzy long enough to find out what God earnestly would want them to do instead. As long as everyone is feverishly puffing away the one thing theyve been given in this life their time in the ceaseless pursuit of little colored papers, he doesnt have the faintest worry. After all, as long as we do that, its certainly not his Enemy were worshiping, much less serving. In fact, chances are, we might not even really know Him. And with a little bit of bad luck, we might even hear Him tell us just that, some day.

More On Workaholism
February 11, 2010 by mcdozer

Ive recently tried to tackle the problem of workaholism, but Im afraid there are a few more aspects to the issue that I would like to expound on. When Im talking about the problem of workaholism, I am, of course, referring to the issue from what I would consider to be a Christian aspect, referring thus to Christians, since its obvious that the majority of the worlds population would not consider the issue a problem at all: Their work is what they live for; it is, essentially, their life. Especially men are notorious for defining their worth, in fact, themselves, by numbers: the numbers on their bank account, the number of cubic centimeters of oil their cars motor holds, or even more seemingly trivial numbers, such as the inches that constitute the size of certain body parts If anything threatens to diminish those numbers, their lives are sometimes drastically reduced to nothing (they feel), and as the recent movie Up In the Air with George Clooney showed some people

consider their lives as good as over when the worst conceivable thing happens to them and they lose their jobs. But what about the Christian aspect on these things? Christian, as in, more than one hour a week Christianity? What did or would Jesus (= Jesus Christ: founder of Christianity) have to say about it? First of all, the word workaholism implies that were dealing with some form of addiction here. As a Christian, you would certainly consider alcoholism a problem. Or any addiction to any intoxicating substance, for that matter. Workaholism, on the other hand, probably the biggest addiction of the last century, has a much more politically correct slant to it in that it brings a family the sort of things modern families have learned not to live without: all those gimmicks advertised to us just about non-stop everywhere, on the tube, the internet, on billboards you name it. We figure, work equals money, and money equals our wives and childrens happiness and security. Im going to be honest with you and admit that probably the reason why Im in any position at all to write as weird a blog as this one is largely due to the fact that I have a partner whose happiness luckily is generally not defined by any of the numbers mentioned above that usually define a mans self-worth. In addition to the fact that I happen to belong to the group of personality types which simply lack the energy for the game of numbers by which we impress our fellow humans, especially those of the other sex. So, lets have a look at what we could safely assume would be Jesus position on workaholism. Was He into our macho game of Ill impress you by my capabilities as a solid provider for my family, etc.? First of all, we can assume that if He would have considered a mans highest duty to pursue his job until His dying day, He would have saved Himself a lot of trouble by sticking to carpentry, instead of persuading at least 12 male members of the working force that we know of to abandon their careers (and families) in order to join Him on what might be considered some rather vague and hazy ambition of errr saving the world from its erroneous ways. And which erroneous ways, exactly? Could they possibly have been exactly what we are talking about? The Matrix? The Machine? We already covered a few things Jesus said that didnt exactly coincide with the universal message of Get a Job!, like the stuff that most working folks hate so much about Him: you know, the lilies of the field talk, and that outrageous statement of not being able to serve God and Mammon simultaneously, in Matthew 6. That was bad enough. Then there was, Labour not for the meat that perisheth. In English, this would mean: Dont work for food that rots away. He said to work for a different sort of food. The type that would last forever. Of course, He was talking about the distribution of His teachings in a sense, but some folks have gone and made a whole industry out of that, too. And with all the spiritual food industry has to offer, does it effectively equip folks with a living relationship with God, an established means of communication with Him thats also going to spill over on others? Not in the case of most Christians I know. People are always quick to pull out the few verses that justify what theyre doing, such as the few that seem to advocate the pursuit of their jobs: He that shall not work shall not eat, and of course, their alltime favorite, In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, which is what the Lord told Adam as a result

of the curse he had brought upon us all by his disobedience, that we still seem to be haunted by Unless we dont have a reason to doubt our Salvation, the one reason why Jesus came to redeem us in the first place: the process that would (and should) reverse and annul the result of the curse in our lives. But again, the reason most folks are insecure about their Salvation is because they are not familiar enough with the Word of God which repeatedly assures them of it (if they believe in Jesus), and the reason they are not familiar with it, is that they are too busy chasing after money. Instead of spending the time to find out how much God really loves them, they settle for the industrial, fast-food version of spirituality: Come back next Sunday for your next fix! Unfortunately, the way the Christian establishment works nowadays is that they encourage their flock to keep doing things exactly this way, since they need their members money in order to feed the machine they have created, which has often become just another branch of the giant Matrix of Mammon. Lets be honest: The place of importance of the two commandments Jesus said were the top two, and basically the essence of them all (namely, to love God and others) has been replaced in the lives of most of us by the great commandment of Mammon: Thou shalt earn money! And, since we are all so much into numbers, lets prove it: How many hours a week do we spend loving God and our fellowmen, compared to the amount of hours we spend labouring for the meat that perisheth? Honestly? If we work 5 times 8 hours a week, how much time and energy do we have left for the two great commandments? It would probably be a generous estimate to say that most of us might be able to eke out perhaps an hour a day for God, and maybe 1 to 3 hours for our families and friends? That adds up to half of what we dedicate to our work. In other words, we are twice as obedient to the great commandment of Mammon than we are to the commandments of God. Of course, you wont hear anybody in the churches preach that And we all know that the above was a generous estimate. The people Im really talking about usually work 10 to 12 hours a day, and spend maybe two or three hours maximally on their faith and with their families, and much of that is due to the fact that they still have to eat sometime. So, what would Jesus say about our modern System and the way most of us practice our religion nowadays? Of course, were hoping He would understand. You know, Lord: everybody does it that way! You cant just stop working! We cant just all start following You and preaching the Gospel, the way You and Your disciples did No, of course not. But maybe just maybe He might remind us of what the priorities are, according to His rules, and that by and large, were failing to live up to that. Perhaps He might also prompt us to try to find a solution and a slightly better balance in our lives between our jobs and that which He obviously considers more important. And perhaps wed find out that less is sometimes more: Less money does not always necessarily equal a lesser quality of life, but if youre out for the Real Thing, at all you might find out, as I have, less money might actually help you appreciate more what youve already got and inspire you to spend more time appreciating it, including our awesome God and the folks He has given us to tug along on our journey through life. Because, at the end of the day, all those numbers, completely regardless of their sum and the amount of their digits, you cant take them with you when its over.

Well, but what if everybody would start working less? The System would collapse! The Chinese would take over!!! The end of the world. I already hear them protest in my mind. Well, just for your information: the System is already collapsing anyway, and its going to collapse sooner or later regardless of any of your doings. Paper money is going to be history before long, and its not because you decided to work only 6 or 7, instead of 10 or 12 hours. The end of the world as we know it is going to come one way or the other, and whether its only going to constitute a new and better beginning for you or a dreadful plunge into icy water will largely depend on the amount of time youre willing to invest today in the things that last, instead of merely the meat that perisheth I guess, in the end, it all depends on where our faith, our hearts (and our treasure) really are: whether in this world with all the things that money can buy, all the security it promises and the self-esteem it gives us, or in the One Who called His out of this world, because they simply were not really part of it

Who Are the Terrorists?

February 11, 2010 by mcdozer

There are some passages in the Bible that dont make much sense to the average, main stream believer, and only start making sense to you if you mean serious business about following God. As a result, as Ive brought out before, most Christians choose to ignore them. The average church goer does not know what it is to be persecuted, maligned or slandered for their faith, nor even of the division that Jesus has been known to bring to people, even among families. If, however, you happen to belong to a small religious minority with somewhat controversial views, things may look quite different. If youre used to newspapers, magazines, and TV hosts distributing lies and twisted half-truths about your own community since decades, you become more aware of the actual degree of accuracy (or rather, the lack thereof) in modern journalism, and one grows increasingly suspicious of news over alleged

terrorists. You somehow know from reading the Bible that the day may not be very far off when theyre going to start calling you a terrorist, too. Every now and then God is good to me and sends along some conformation of something I happen to believe (as outlandish as some of it may be), and I come across an article by some established journalist or writer stating exactly what Ive been feeling all along. In his article, The Lynch Mob Mentality, Glenn Greenwald voices exactly my sentiments on the terrorists issue. Its always encouraging when theres another lone voice piping up somewhere that gives you the kind of feeling of, Right on, Bro! Just the sheer fact that someone out there who doesnt swallow the propaganda thats being spewed at us by the dragon of the mass media, gives us possibly the terrorists of tomorrow a glimpse of hope, even if only a glimpse, as far as the level of awareness of our fellowmen is concerned (although we generally have stopped daring to hinge our hopes on frail flesh and blood long ago) Another neat little confirmation of some of my utterings I came across recently was this article, in which Pastor Jeff Vanderstelt is quoted as telling his fellow-clergy that The job of pastors, teachers and apostles is to equip the saints for works of ministry, not to do the ministry for the saints, which is one of the points I tried to make with my recent NewLeaf post on Effective Evangelism. The key word here being equip. If what were mainly interested in is equipping folks with the truth and the spiritual weaponry found therein to counter evil without worrying who will get the credit or even the money for it, were probably a lot closer to Jesus original idea of an apostle. Unfortunately, being so outrageously different from the established method will inevitably put your group or church in the camp of the outcasts, black-labeled and maligned, since something has just got to be wrong with those who just want to give folks Jesus, His Word and Holy Spirit without insisting on stuffing them in the box of the good old established church system and the way weve always done it In other words, if any Christian should decide to actually practice the equipping of saints for works of ministry as preached above, he is very likely to discover one of those truths he may have thus far considered outdated: And all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution (2Tim.3:12). The Devil doesnt mind just one more preacher in a million, preaching to another congregation in a million that will limit their faith life to listening to a sermon per week, but he will certainly hate your guts and fight you tooth and nail once you really start doing the job God intended for us to do Lets see how readily you will join the rest of the world in labeling others terrorists, radicals, fanatics or extremists then.

Who Are the Terrorists? (Take 2)

February 17, 2010 by mcdozer

We just watched Avatar, and contrary to my expectations, based on Christian reviews and articles I had read about it over the past weeks, I really liked it. Basically, we just watched it for our daughters sake, with the usual, for whatever its worth attitude, but I guess Im too much of a nature freak myself to have disliked this movie, and I would like to express some thoughts here about where Im afraid Corporate Christendom is mistaken in most of its mainstream interpretations of the film. Im not too naive to not see the obvious Gaya message here. But if wanting to save the Earth is New Age, then I have shocking news for you: God is New Age, too: And the nations were angry, and Thy wrath is come, and the time of the dead, that they should be judged, and that Thou shouldest give reward unto Thy servants the prophets, and to the saints, and them that fear Thy name, small and great; and shouldest destroy them which destroy the earth (Revelation 11:18). God happens to love this blue ball, and He apparently does not like the kind of folks who destroy it, regardless of whether they do it in the name of red-white-and-blue flag waving Churchianity or not. Oh, so there was talk of spirits in the movie. Real scary. Theyre alive! What a shocker! The problem with Corporate Christianity is, they like to deep freeze everything: they like to deep freeze the white-hot Spirit of God, if they can, to keep everyone cool and calm in the churches, lest anyone start any revolutionary fires out there, that the Big Holy Corporation couldnt control They like to believe that the minute youre dead, youre first going into a state of spiritual deep-freeze so you cant spook around and haunt anybody, but thats not what we can glean from the Bible: We have accounts of the spirit of the prophet Samuel, of Elias, Moses, and a cloud of witnesses alive and kicking from beyond the grave, and God turning the hearts of the sons to their fathers. We have a Savior claiming to be the Resurrection and the Life and that whoever believes in Him, would never die, and yet weve got all of His supposed followers scared stiff of the mere utterance of the word spirit.

Sure, the worship scenes were a bit weird. But not any weirder than some Pentecostal worship scenes you can watch on Youtube Then there are the painfully embarrassing parallels in the story of Avatar between the Navi (Natives?) and not only the American Natives who suffered a similar fate (except for the happy ending), but every native tribe on the face of Gods earth who simply had to be pressed into the same civilized molds they reared us in, otherwise they were not allowed to continue to live: Become like us, or die seems to be the interpretation of the Gospel since the birth of the Corporate and officially recognized and state-supported version of Christianity roughly 1700 years ago. And of course, the even more painful parallels between the victims in the movie and the real live victims of 21st century Christendom: Whoever is sitting on something you want must become your enemy Ouch! Better keep praying for our boys to help our generals haul all that Iraqi Oil on Home to Daddy, where it belongs There was an article out a few weeks ago about young people being depressed after watching Avatar because they would prefer to live in a world like Pandora Well, can you blameem? Maybe they just got sick of gray! Maybe they prefer green to the color of concrete. Maybe theyre sick and tired of the plastic world youre handing them! And apparently you havent managed to convince them yet that the Place the Christian God has in store for His believers is actually real, or really where its happening. Perhaps, if they figure youre going to be there, walking around in your suit and singing those humdrum holier than thou songs, they couldnt possibly imagine theyre going to be happy there. Personally, my own idea of my favorite spot in Heaven is a lot more like the Home of the Navi than a church building. Chalk it up to my early Tarzan influences (since I devoured a bunch of antiquated Edgar Rice Burroughs tomes in my childhood), but I always thought it would be cool to have a home in a gigantic tree Maybe yours is all streets of gold lined with one church building next to another, just like in Tennessee But who says that Heaven has to look exactly the same everywhere? Last I heard, its a mighty big Place. I also have no problem with the teaching that God is everywhere and in all living things. I think of Him as being a lot more inclusive than that warmongering, genocidal, separatist version of Christianity that has always preferred its own philosophy of kill whatever is different over its supposed Founders order, Love your enemies! - The argument, of course, being, Well, who knows what would have happened, if we would have loved our enemies, instead of killing them? I guess God knows. Maybe some day Hell show all of us what might have happened if the American Natives would have been allowed to continue their existence prior to their extermination, and what Christians might have learned from some of them. Or what if one and a half million Iraqis wouldnt have been ransacked on grounds of some very shady excuses

I know its tough, learning to love those who are different. We even resist our own children and their weird inklings to want to watch weird movies like that (Not to mention our wives sudden inspirations like wanting to get a dog and open up a tattoo shop) We must preserve our own values. Funny thing is that Jesus message was never about preservation, but much more about Give it up! But thats not something were willing to do. Not for Him, and certainly not for mother earth. We insist on keeping driving our the-fatter-the-better cars, and we insist on being the champions of the world. We cant grant the others the slightest chance of ever becoming a threat to us. Weve got to make sure we remain no.1 for the sake of the gospel Well, you know my opinion about that type of Gospel. I suppose a lot of Christians would consider me a traitor the way Jake Sully, the character who tells the Avatar story, was perceived as having betrayed his own Who would you rather fight for? A bunch of corporate warmongers, or any peaceful, though perhaps somewhat strange and foreign culture in touch with nature? I know, you dont think you could ever make it without all your high-tech toys and your fancy Western life-style, but why not be honest about it and admit that youre having a problem, and its not the others? Maybe they only have a weird religion because in their eyes, yours is even weirder! Maybe Mohammed wouldnt have even had to cook up Islam, if Christians wouldnt have been such a pitiful bunch of idolaters at the time he came around Why not be honest and confess that its we who are sick, totally addicted and hooked on some shiny temptation that looks almost exactly like the real thing, but on the inside is a far cry from it? Maybe the enemies of Christianity wouldnt have had to cook up their own New Age religion if Christians wouldnt always fall so badly for every shiny temptations their real Enemy comes up with If we wouldnt fall for him time and time and time and time again (Coincidentally, maybe Adam Weishaupt never would have founded the Illuminati if the church had allowed him to marry his deceased wifes sister) Our credo remains, We have declared terror on terror. Hmmm. Who are the real terrorists, though? I guess well all know, someday. And a lot of people are going to be in for a shock, when the Dude in whose name they did all that killing is going to pretend as if He never even knew them

Maybe they never even knew Him. Maybe all they ever worshiped was an idea of Him that couldnt have been further from the truth. Maybe the truth is somewhere a lot closer to the middle between those tree-huggers and the conquistadores who want to fell every last tree in the name of progress and enlightenment than most of our conservative brethren would ever have the guts or imagination to consider If you ask me, Id rather be on the side of the victims than on that of the butchers. At least they know how to fight for real, know how to die, and what theyre dying for. Maybe our God is going to turn out being quite the totally Other than ourselves: A God Who not only loves the good, the rich and the beautiful, but also the weird, the bad & the ugly, and that He would have wanted us to walk a little more in His shoes, if we were already calling ourselves by His Sons name, and loved the least of our brethren a little more, instead of butchering them by the millions One really neat thing that was said in the movie was, You cant fill a vessel thats already full. Theres more wisdom in that, and more truth about the reality of Christendom than youll ever hear in a thousand sermons. Its basically the same thing Jesus said to the Pharisees: If you knew you were blind, you wouldnt be to blame, but because you think you see. When we stop learning and all we want to do is convert everybody to our way of seeing things, something terrible has begun to happen. You start missing the very purpose for which you were born on this earth. You start seeing everybody whos different and doesnt think and act exactly the same as you do as an enemy, instead of saying, I see you. Sure, its a terrible thing that a lot of our youth are seeing Gaya worship and New Age as a more attractive alternative to your religion. But maybe its because they never really needed a religion as much as they needed the truth, and we must all sincerely ask ourselves whether thats really what we wanted and were looking for and have found or did we settle for half-truths mixed with convenient lies? We wouldnt have been the only ones. It has always happened, since the beginning of time, even to people way more perfect than we ever were, made straight in the image of God I agree that James Cameron is sincerely mistaken about a few of his views, such as stated in his Lost Tomb of Jesus documentary, or in the apparent assumption that Arnold Schwarzenegger is or has ever been anything close to a good actor (although his acting career definitely supersedes the political). Hes probably going to get his surprises, too, at the end of lifes road But I can also see his point. If Jesus was anything like the majority of His followers portray Him, Id have changed over to the Gaya camp long ago, too.

I love my enemy enough to be able to learn from him. Unfortunately, sometimes I have the impression that theres more to learn from some of our enemies than we can from our supposed friends. It wasnt the Romans who were bent on crucifying Jesus, but His own religious leaders When will we ever learn?

You Know Youre a Winner When

February 25, 2010 by mcdozer You know youre a winner when you dont have time to answer your e-mails. your children start crying at the sight of you, Mommy, I dont like that man! your psycho-analyst has become a millionaire, thanks to you. you can ruin a familys life by their kid scratching your car (because they couldnt possibly pay the repair in their lifetime). your vacations are the most stress-filled time of the year. you receive the Nobel Peace Prize while (officially) waging war in 3 countries and your country sells two thirds of all weapons being sold worldwide. no matter what you tell folks, theyll believe it, just because you said it. youre being stalked and haunted day and night by journalists and paparazzi , hoping theyll catch you doing something dirty. folks cant watch your videos in many countries of the world because it is property of Sony.

you earn millions by a single phone conversation with your stock broker (and lose billions by another winners phone conversation with his). every day of your life costs more than most people will earn in their life-times. you have tons of friends, none of which sincerely like you. you can utter whichever atrocity you like, and people will still smile and applaud, thinking youre gorgeous. you sleep an average of five hours per night. your greatest nightmare is every good idea your competitor has. everyone in the restaurant starts drooling at the sight of your new girl-friend. the bill the waiter hands you exceeds the monthly wage you pay your housekeeper. your children and relatives start fighting over their inheritance while youre still in your forties. you can afford to hire AC/DC for your birthday party, and at midnight they play your personal favorite Highway to Hell. you stumble across this blog and call your lawyer to sue me for publicizing personal information.

Why Some Folks Prefer to Have a Monkey for a Grandfather

March 8, 2010 by mcdozer

The problem with much of the church is, that it causes much of the rest of mankind to prefer to seek not only the company, but even relation with the animal world over stiff, self-righteous and dogmatic human behavior, as is portrayed vividly by the statement of the evolutionist Joseph Hooker (one of Darwins associates) during a scientific debate at Oxford University in 1860, regarding his opponent, Bishop Samuel Wilberforce: I would rather have a monkey for a grandfather than such a man as this! As long as Christians make the rest of the world run to the jungle for solace and the smallest trace of kindness to be found, we will always have bad cards. The greatest tragedy about all this is the fact that Jesus was actually leading the way into that jungle of the basic needs of humanity, but that over the centuries, His followers largely preferred to walk in the footsteps of His enemies, the self-righteous religious Scribes and Pharisees, who were ultimately responsible for His death (since the worldly Governor Pilate would have gladly preferred to let Him go). Im not writing this in order to repeatedly wave my finger at the churches, but because I still catch myself occasionally displaying Pharisaical behavior toward others with different views and opinions than my own, and if it happens to me, as unorthodox, non-traditional, anti-ritual and marginalized a believer as I am, then I can only figure that woe is us, if we all have such difficulties to really live the essence of what our God stands for (namely love), and keep falling into the traps of the old school of self-righteous religiosity. Much of the point Im trying to make throughout this blog is that we, Christians, have to radically adapt our act and behavior toward the rest of the world, if we want to stand a chance to survive whats coming at us. We need to learn to love our enemies, as Jesus said, instead of killing them. Otherwise, history will expose the whole lot of us as hypocrites, which has already happened to a lot of our brethren from all sorts of denominations throughout time Weve got to become real and the Real Thing, and start developing a taste for the truth, instead of joining the rest of the Corporate World climbing up its ladder in which each step is a lie that promises us another advantage over our competitors. We need to learn that Jesus wasnt here to start a business. At least none in which we were supposed to try to outsmart and out-finance each other. We are in a competition, alright, but for souls, not for money, and the guy were supposedly competing against, is unfortunately sitting right in our living rooms most of the time, instead of hiding out in the desert sand where we suspect him. Were not going to lick the Devil with his own weapons. A lie was never an efficient cure for another lie. Lies are the weapons of our opponent that enable him to keep us all hanging in cages above a pitch black bottomless abyss while dwelling in the illusion that were soaring into a blue sky of freedom with puffy white clouds, birds a-chirping and Britney Spears singing Somewhere Over the Rainbow in a school uniform with an extra short skirt. The only remedy weve got against the global pandemic addiction to Satans lies is the truth.

And unless were willing to change our diet from blue pills to red, were not seriously going to free anyone else, either, but just offer them another cage, another little matrix based on lies with a little bit of truth mixed in for sugar-coating. Yes, that red pill is going to be bitter. It may even cause you to throw up in the process and shock the hell out of you. But its also the only real alternative to the abyss, the emptiness, and the label that is going to stick with us to some extent possibly for the rest of eternity, if we dont choose truth: Hypocrite!

9/11 Old Hat or Crossroads in History?

March 14, 2010 by mcdozer

Just how much of an issue 9/11 still really is, was shown by the recent incident on the website of the Huffington Post, where the editor had asked former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura to contribute an article, but a few hours after having posted it, they took it off-line again. The title of the article: What Really Happened on September 11? Reason: It is against Huffington Post policy to publish conspiracy theories. The question I have is, if everybody is only supposed to parrot the official fairy-tale, then why bother to pretend to be any sort of alternative news source at all?

Ventura wasnt just warming up old theories, but reporting of the latest developments in the 9/11 truth movement, and the Huffington Post reaction is a classical example and proof that this whole issue is anything but over yet. Come on: everybody is going hyper as soon as the slightest evidence comes out that might indicate that Jesus of Nazareth, also known as the Christ may not have been crucified, but buried with his wife and uncles in Jerusalem, or that He fathered dozens of kiddies instead If everybody is so gung ho to find out what exactly happened nearly 2000 years ago (since they obviously dont want to believe the official report on those incidents), then how come nobody could care less about the real backgrounds of the greatest crime in modern history that took place not even 10 years ago? It just shows that the one thing people like Arianna Huffington couldnt care less about is the truth, unfortunately reflecting the vast majority of her cowardly colleagues of the international press. The sad and deceptive thing about it is that these people pretend to be sources of new information and uncovering whats going on in the world, when nothing could be further from the truth. They dont mind publishing conspiracy theories (formerly known as inside information) about the War on Drugs (the forerunner of the current episode of the War-On Morons, the War on Terror), or about who shot Kennedy, but to deny the official fairy-tale that would take away any and all justification for the genocide in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and to some extent, Palestine, puts you into the same league as Holocaust Deniers. Its okay for over a thousand architects and engineers to risk their reputation by demanding a new investigation of 9/11, but obviously newspaper editors fall into a much higher and nobler category of folks (at least in their own opinion). Personally, it only confirms my own experiences of 3 1/2 decades with the press, and the reason why I dont have any respect for those people anymore at all. Its just good to know that the Huffington Post can be taken off my list of potentially alternative news sources. Who needs another episode of Howling with the wolves? Not me! If you want to sell me something you dare call news, then youd better give me something better than that average run-off-the-mill hogwash that thousands of journalists around the globe sold their soul for, in exchange for the cheap mess of pottage of seeing their name under some article that says everything theyre ever allowed to say in our Orwellian 21st century: absolutely nothing. Its better not having learned to read at all than to have to wade through such lukewarm hogwash.

The Straw That Broke the Camels Back

March 15, 2010 by mcdozer

Ive been thinking a bit more about James Cameron and his apparently opposing stance toward Christianity, as conveyed through his last two motion pictures, and although I dont know much about his ideological background thought Id have to say a few more things in his defense and perhaps of others like him: The keyword is Bush. What makes the whole matter of trying to save the face of Christianity a Sisyphus task is the fact that George Bush claimed to be a Christian (whether he still does is irrelevant, since his decisions do no longer determine the lives and deaths of millions), and posed as one of Christianitys most stout defenders and protagonists. Im just wondering whether we, as Christians, should just willingly accept any type of famous personality and figure of power to speak for all of us, when a little bit of healthy discernment might have easily alarmed us that something about his actions did not jibe with his words (much as is the case with the current President, but without all the embarrassing pseudo-religious ado about it). Now, Christianity already had bad cards in the eyes of a largely brainwashed public whos been hearing and reading the same old stuff about the crusades, the inquisition, Catholic child abuse, weird Christian cults, etc., etc. for decades, but George Bush was just about the straw that broke the camels back. (The camel being Christianitys image in the world). Anybody with half a brain and enough wits to put two and two together could figure out that if Christianity was the religion that someone like George Bush professed to be a champion of, then it had to be the epitome of evil.

I mean, who wants to go to Heaven with the prospect of folks like that up there, right? The other problem being that the vast majority of Christians worldwide swallowed the bait and believed all the books that came out about how George Bush was the man who brought faith into the White House, etc. But as I have stated before, Christians often make the grave mistake of underestimating their Enemy. It would never occur to them to what lengths the Devil goes in order to fool them, not until its way too late. The camouflage is so perfect, that some now even see him as the good guy, and Obama as the bad guy who wrecked the country since hes in office, when there is really no difference at all between Bush and Obama, except that Obama can do without all the Pseudo-Christian ado God is not the author of confusion, but the other guy, who is the author of confusion, is doing a magnificent job here. Though it doesnt really take brains as much as sticking to what Jesus said and a little bit of the Holy Ghost to be able to look through the facade. That again, is a price too high to pay for most believers. And as long as thats the case, there will always be folks like James Cameron who will come across a lot more like the good guys than all those gun-totin Christians. The problem is they havent recognized their real enemy, and while theyre staring into the high noon sun, struttin out into the street to lay down their supposed opponent with one swift blow from the hip, their real enemy is shooting them in the back from the roof Having learned nothing from a century of Hollywood tutoring Instead of spending trillions on blasting third world countries back to Kingdom come, they should have invested a little more in the sort of weaponry that really makes a difference: the white-hot sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, and some of those gifts of the Spirit like discernment, and some live communication with their true Commander-In Chief, Who could have told them that the phony theyre sacrificing their sons for is a fake By their fruits ye shall know them. And the sad testimony in all this is, that those who dont share our faith sometimes have greater discernment and a better sense to distinguish between good fruit and a rotter than we do. Heres a link to an article from 2008 that paints a different picture than the icon of St. George W. were all supposed to fall for:
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/book_extracts/article3255937.ece

Anybody can say theyre saved. So did Charles Manson. What greater damage could a Satanist inflict on the body of Christianity than to pretend that He loves Jesus? Lets face it: More than once in history has the Devil availed himself of Christians There are some friends you wouldnt want to have. Even if they were the President of the United States of America!

Salute to the Younger Generation from Neanderthal

March 19, 2010 by mcdozer

Some young folks seem to be wondering about us, the older generation of their parents, those survivors from the 60s and 70s, how on earth we ever managed to get this old and make it this far around, I mean, being such losers and all, with our loser hair-cuts, our loser clothes, and why, we didnt even have cell phones back then, no ipods or computer games. To be honest, sometimes I wonder myself how on earth I managed to ever get this old. Especially since we were lacking a few other things our younger generation touts, such as their undying self-confidence, not doubting for a second that the world is theirs for the asking or less, a snap of the fingers, along with the solid assurance that they have all the time in the world, and why, by the time theyre going to be really old, like in their 30s, they might have even invented some stuff to enable them to live forever We didnt have any of that, since we were always scared stiff that the inventions of our parents generation were going to see to it that the world was going to come flying around our ears any day. The only dweebs who thought that time was on their side in our generation were the Rolling Stones. So, I guess the secret of our survival against all these odds was that we simply made do with what we had. We were more or less happy for what each day brought, because, well, it may have well been our last, and we didnt miss any ipods or cell phones or gameboys because we never even knew you needed to have these things in order to survive. As they say, sometimes ignorance is bliss. Im afraid we did have a few qualities, which, granted, may have been a little antiquated (since we were still way back on the first few steps of evolution compared to that quantum leap of enlightenment we all experienced during the first decade of the 21st century), such as that ancient thing called appreciation (Im sure its not even in the dictionary anymore), and oh, yes, that one was really a joke: we called it respect.

We didnt even know what it meant back then, but when you looked at someone, you didnt immediately see the loser in them, but a howbeit primitive, but nonetheless human being, and we gave them the benefit of the doubt. They may have been different from us even older, but we somehow gave them a chance to prove themselves to maybe not turn out to be a mega-loser, after all (although the evolution of the word mega-loser only set in a decade later, or two, I must admit). In other words, me might have given them a second glance, which, in essence is what re-spect means: look again! Instead of Stalloneian invulnerability and Schwarzeneggerian immortality we had to do with an outdated item called decency. Somehow, though, the fact that we were missing out on all the qualities that make the new generation so superior managed to perfectly elude us. We didnt even realize. We somehow managed to exist with only a fraction of the TV channels available to folks today, without all the wonders of hi-tech communication and just resorted to the available, though primitive means of verbal conversation, or even writing letters and such stuff. Since we had a lot less things, those fewer things somehow meant more to us. Even such tiny, seemingly irrelevant particles of our world as words still seemed to have a meaning to us back then, that was, before our politicians enlightened us to the delusion of our ways (since they obviously proved the opposite to be true time and again, namely that words dont really coincide with reality). Yes, they were strange and bizarre times, and I guess the way most young folks nowadays relate to them was the way that we looked back on the Stone Age. So, heres a salute to you, the younger generation of the onset of the 21st century, from one of those ancient cavemen: May all your dreams come true, and not turn into nightmares (just as many of our nightmares thankfully did not come true), and may you achieve all your goals. May those who lead you turn out to be truer than those who led us, and may you, too, learn to appreciate what you have, and perhaps the way we did despite all that wealth of new knowledge you accumulate, enjoy a little bit of the blissful ignorance occasionally, of all the things future generations will wonder how you managed to survive without; and may you if possible remember this one piece of advice from a 20th century Neanderthal man: Its not having what you want, but wanting what you have that counts.

The Creation Message: Keep Hanging In There!

March 27, 2010 by mcdozer

Probably not only to the vast majority of scientists, but also to most adherents of modern science, which includes the majority of the worlds population, would consider the creation account of the Book of Genesis outrageous and a downright slap in the face of all that is currently regarded as science. And, granted, it is a little bit hard to believe. Once you get over the 6-days factor, you still have this seemingly insurmountable obstacle: You mean to tell me that the earth was just hanging there for 3 days in the nothingness of empty space, and that God actually created all plant life on it before He even created the sun and the rest of the stars, as in, the rest of the matter of all the billions of galaxies in the universe? I admit, it sounds totally outrageous. Picture the earth, trees and grass and bushes and all, circling around the spot where tomorrow the sun is going to be Very absurd indeed. But then, so is the notion of anyone walking on water, raising folks, including Himself, from the dead, healing the blind from birth, turning water into wine, feeding thousands from a few loaves and fishes, etc., etc., etc. The God of the Bible is either the greatest story teller and liar in the universe, or Hes definitely capable of a few stunts that leave the rest of us speechless, including creating universes in very unorthodox manners. Obviously, the vast majority of my fellowmen subscribe to the former of these two options. And I can hardly blame them. It takes a lot of faith to believe this account, so contrary to all that 99.999% of all other existing books on the topic of our origins tell us. It takes faith that can only be acquired by the life-long experience that everything else that is said in that outrageous and most disputed of all books

the Bible actually works. Of course, few have ever had the courage to try to find out whether these things work. They dont mind listening to some well chosen portions of it once a week, and amazingly enough, that already seems to be doing the trick of getting them through the rest of the week. But as someone who can testify first hand by 30 years of experience that God really keeps His Word when He promises that if we would seek first the interests of His Kingdom, then He would give us all the things we need for life, like food and clothing for free (see Matthew 6:33), along with a host of His other Promises, its also not entirely impossible to believe that the first chapter of the Book I based my life on is also more than just (non-science) fiction. I admit, though, Ive had my disputes with the Boss about it, and have sometimes asked Him, How on earth could You? I mean, couldnt You just have had the decency to please create this universe in some sort of orthodox, well-received and politically correct manner, instead of defying all that could be summed up as human common sense and having the audacity to bluntly contradict all of the sum of our combined wisdom and knowledge? What I got in response was something along the lines that just like everything in nature, the creation of earth was also some sort of actual, physical metaphor or example of a much greater spiritual truth. The sort of thing Im going on about at length in my attempt at an eBook, The Deeper Meaning of Everything. So, what sort of deep, mystical spiritual truth is the story of the creation of planet earth supposed to bear for us, what sort of deeper significance, parable or lesson is there to learn from it? Basically, it is: Keep hanging in there! Humans are frantic little beings, and even the term beings already implies that theyve got to be frantically occupied with ensuring their own little existence, lest by the slightest little pause of all their frantic activities and incessant efforts to keep themselves alive they should bring upon their heads the end of the world as we know it. And so we feverishly work and work and work in order to artificially keep ourselves alive, only to sooner or later wind up in a coffin despite all our feverish efforts, and getting our planet a lot closer a lot sooner to that dreaded end than we might have if we would have paused long enough to think, or better: pray. We think weve just gotta make it happen. What God is saying by His outrageous statement of just letting the earth hang there by itself is: Wrong! - We are not the ones who make it happen. He is. We always worry that whatever we have is not going to be enough. We worry that the money we have is not going to be enough, and that the food we have is not going to be enough, and the space we have is not going to be enough. Our remedy is then liquidating our rivals: all those useless eaters who dont work as hard as we do on making it happen, and who just threaten to occupy our living space, eat away our food , breathe away our air, and present a danger to our own survival.

What God is trying to tell us by His outrageous statement in having had the audacity of creating planet earth before the rest of the universe is that despite all our frantic worrying, the fact remains that He is enough. All it ever took and will take to keep each and everyone of us breathing and alive is His power, totally regardless of all our feverish efforts. He can ensure life on our planet with or without our help, and the course of history is on its best way to prove that the way were going about it, is not going to work. If we think were going to be able to save ourselves with our annual trillion dollars worth of highly sophisticated weapons, were utterly mistaken. It will probably turn out that it would have been better off never having done anything at all, instead of spending this outrageous amount of time, effort, manpower and tax money (yes, thats right: yours and mine) on the investment in technology with the one purpose of murdering our fellow humans. So, who are we to tell God how He ought to have created His universe? Oh, I forgot. We dont really believe in Him, so its not really His. Its ours. We think. So we can do with it whatever we want, including blowing it to Smithereens. Maybe were actually mistaken. Not only about how earth came into being, but also about our rights to treat this place the way we do, in other words: its destruction. One reason for my audacity to prefer to believe the biblical account of creation,is that mankind has thus far utterly failed to convince me of their supposedly oh-so superior intelligence and smartness. I can tell by their actions that there must be something dreadfully dumb about them. So how are they going to tell me that they know better than God about how this planet came into being? Ive found by experience that God is a good Friend. I mean goood. He doesnt lie. He doesnt try to impress you by His stunts to convince you how much cooler He is than you. Hes a real Pal. I cant say He disappointed me ever, not once. Sure, we have our disagreements, occasionally, but He always manages to get me to see His point sooner or later. And I cant say the same thing about people. People lie. People are extremely deceived, especially when it comes to themselves and their supposed omniscience and infallibility. It turns out that if I want something to really hang my life on, something to fully trust, Im better off with the invisible nature of God, and that apparent nothingness my life revolves around than all the rah-rah and ado of my 7 billion fellowmen put together. I may be very much alone in my opinion on the surface.

But something or rather, Someone keeps telling me, that if I just hang in there a little bit longer, I wont be alone that much longer. All of a sudden, there are going to be billions of bright shining lights all around me, confirming that I was right in putting my trust in Mr. Invisible after all. Jesus Himself was left alone in the dark of the heart of the earth for three days, obviously on His mission to preach to the spirits in prison. But He didnt have to go on for very long down there in that darkness. Maybe God just needs a three days break every now and then to show us what He can do if we just dare to trust Him long enough that He was right, after all, contrary to all the gazillions of voices who claim to know better. So, if you ever feel youre totally alone and forsaken, hanging out there in sheer nothingness, and not knowing what to make of it, just keep hanging in there! Chances are, youre not the first one in history whos had to go through this experience. Chances are, the very same thing happened, once upon a time, not all too long ago, though, to a planet called Earth

The Illusion of Change

April 5, 2010 by mcdozer

Probably one of the greatest deceptions taking place in our times is the illusion of change, and Im not just talking about the Obama administration, although its definitely a perfect example of it. In order to create the illusion of change, some actual change has to take place, but only on the surface. And its true, on the surface, things have changed a lot over the past 100 years: our ways of getting from point A to B, our methods of communicating, or keeping ourselves fed, clothed and entertained.

However, no substantial change has taken place in the deep motivations of mankind for our actions, no significant change of heart. Were still ruled by the same fears and lusts as our ancestors of all times. We just think we are superior because we have changed on the surface. You put a remote control into a mans hand instead of a plow or shovel, and hell think hes evolved. - Or a machine gun instead of a sword, and he may think hes come a long way. But the end result is the same. You put a black face on the President, and at first everyone is awed: Weve certainly never seen THAT before, nor did we ever think we were going to live to see it, but when its just the same stupid white men pressing the buttons on his remote control who controlled the last puppet, its Meet the new boss same as the old boss Thats what stinks about organized Christianity, also increasingly referred to as Churchianity: It totally misses the drift of its supposed Founder. Christianity as it is has become a force for conservatism in this world, when its original Founder was and is the total and absolute opposite. What Jesus was and is and will always represent in this world of phony changes, is total Revolution, and total break with the decaying, sinful ways and attitudes of man, which havent changed a bit since Adam and Eve, except that theyve gotten worse, similar to the condition of a carcass over time. If He is the Life, we are the dead. If He is the Way, weve been certainly going in the opposite direction. If Hes the Truth, then most of what you will hear from us, the pride and glory of civilization, is the opposite. Just turn on the TV and count the lies you will hear within 30 minutes. Providing you are still able to discern between truth and lies. Youll get the drift. So, change has happened, alright: the lies have become more and bigger. The condition of the carcass humanity has worsened. However were more delusional than ever in our perception of ourselves as the greatest thing to ever have happened on Gods earth. Until perhaps we catch an accidental glimpse of the 40.000 people we allow to starve each and every day right in front of our noses, just to make sure therell be enough left for us tomorrow So, you may buy into all the hype and rah-rah of progress, advance and the glories of mankind, I dont buy it. As Dylan once put it: So, sing your praise of progress and of the doom machine the naked truth is still taboo whenever it can be seen. Whats worst about the illusion of change is that it makes us think we dont need any real change. Whats worst about the illusion of health is that it makes us think we dont need the Doctor. Whats worst about our oh so great perception of ourselves, is that well never realize just how badly we need Somebody to drag us out of our mess. Whats worst about Satans puppets acting like all the saviors we ever needed is that well never realize how badly we need Jesus.

Whats worst about our blindness is that we actually think we see. Thus is the deadly venom of the illusion of change. Saint Johns visions of the coming leader of the New World Order, commonly referred to as the Antichrist (with reference to his intentions and philosophical inclinations, thus leading to the conclusion that he could not be the Pope), strongly indicate that he will be the culmination of all previous world empires rolled into one, from ancient Egypt to Rome. In other words, even though he may be availing himself of every hi-tech facility thinkable in order to control, enslave and terrorize his global subjects, underneath, its going to be the same barbaric and tyrannical spirit as always. The only One actually ever effecting REAL change in the course of history will be Jesus. He may have subtly done so during His first coming. It will be significantly less subtly during the next.

The Race of the Mystery Riders

April 13, 2010 by mcdozer

When Jesus made the much dreaded statement in Matthew 6 that we cannot serve God and Mammon (the god of wealth = materialism), He must have already known that while millions would someday profess to be His servants, in reality they were going to dedicate the bulk of their attention and efforts in service to this competitor in the quest for mans most precious commodity, time. While most interpretations of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse claim that the rider on the white horse is supposed to be the Antichrist, I personally contend that the proper interpretation of this passage should ascribe the identification of the white rider to Jesus, and the other three His fiercest competitors

throughout time, perhaps in some sort of a race for our souls, and when time is up (literally!), there will only be one of them left. Who are those mystery riders? War, materialism and death, also known by other ancient names by which they were known, revered and even worshiped for millennia: Ares (the Romans called him Mars), Mammon and Hades. Luckily, the Bible already tells us who is going to be the winner of the race, since it foretells a time in which men will beat their swords into plowshares and will learn war no more, which eliminates Ares, the god of war from the equation. We are also told the fate of Hades, the god of death and hell in the lake of fire. So what about Mammon, the god of wealth? In our current terms, Mammon can easily be replaced by a word for the stuff that allegedly rules the world: money. Some think it will last forever. The Bible tells us differently. In fact, from what the Bible tells us, it seems that of the four riders, Mammon will be the first one to yield up the ghost. Granted, this is just one of my own personal theories, but its based on some serious thought: When the Antichrist imposes his mark of the beast in the new economic order everyone from Kissinger to the Pope is expecting with excitement (as foretold in Revelation 13), it seems that will be the end of money or at least cash as we know it. Perhaps one reason why the Almighty wont be so fond of that new method of trade at all will be the fact that Satan will have managed to create the perfect imitation of His own system of currencies: faith. The object of mans desire will have been placed from the visible to the invisible realm, the perfect counterfeit of Gods system. And for those who fall for it, I guess its going to be like having made their choice for the other side. If my assumption is correct, and its Mammon who bites the dust first when the AC implements the mark, it might also explain one of the most mysterious passages in the Bible about the Endtime: For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work; only he who now restrains will do so until he is taken out of the way. And then the lawless one (The Antichrist) will be revealed, whom the Lord will consume with the breath of His mouth and destroy with the brightness of His coming. (2Thess.2:7,8) Some scholars interpret this passage as to be referring to the Holy Ghost as He who now restrainsuntil he is taken out of the way; that the Antichrist cannot be revealed unless the Holy Ghost be taken away. But how are the final two witnesses in Rev.11 going to give their testimony without the Holy Ghost? And for the benefit of all those left behind during the Great Tribulation (which might be more than

many people think, especially in the light that the Rapture is only going to occur after it, as Jesus said), lets all pray to God that the Holy Ghost isnt going to be taken away. But it would have to be someone or something that was already around in Pauls day, which certainly applies to money So, heres my little theory for you on the race of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse: Jesus, Ares, Mammon & Hades

To Be Or Not to Be of This World

April 16, 2010 by mcdozer

Being a politically correct Christian with a politically correct God and Christ these days means to refrain from separatist tirades indicating that there should be any sort of division between true believers Christs genuine disciples, and the rest of the world. The world, that mass of people Jesus told His disciples they were not a part of, if existent at all, are always the Hottentots in far-off countries who wouldnt be able to afford our bestsellers on PopSpirituality in the 21st century anyways. So, let me be politically incorrect here once again and heat up the old forgotten and despised doctrine of John 15:19 and harp a little bit on that: Is there such a thing as the world in the sense of something we should not be part of, if we call ourselves followers of the Maker of that statement, or is it just a myth, and were all so super goodie-good and moving toward the point of enlightenment in our evolution which will usher in universal peace without the Almighty having to resort to any of the drastic measures He announced in the portions of His Book that are carefully being avoided by popular Christian authors? Of course, its natural to want to erase any existing lines of division between yourself and your target audience when that audience is supposed to eke out 30 bucks for your latest compilation of divine wisdom. But are those potential readers really being helped and enlightened by the illusion that all is at peace, the Devils on vacation and there is no actual spiritual warfare going on? Progress, in the eyes of the liberal, widely accepted brand of the Christian faith, seems to be equivalent with the eradication of any and all lines of separation between them and the world, and thus its being drilled into our minds for the umpteenth time that We are, indeed, the world

But ignoring innumerable wrongs still wont make a single right, and remaining silent about some of the qualities of the world may easily put us on the side of the enemy camp, as far as God is concerned, no matter how vocally we may be rooting for Christianity. Personally, I think Id rather watch Matrix one more time, for some inside scoop of whats really going on. One of the reasons why I do believe in the existence of such a thing Jesus called the world (that I dont feel I belong to), is that I have found out that there is, in fact, also a distinction between lies and truth. Now, for many folks in our success-oriented world, that distinction is nearly non-existent. Theyre so used to lying, they cant tell the difference anymore. It wouldnt occur to them to call anything their political leader or anyone says on TV or anywhere, for that matter, an untruth or a lie, because it would mean that they would have to be more careful about their own truthfulness (or lack thereof), and who wants to pay that sort of a price? So if mass murderers like Charles Manson or warmongering Nobel peace prize winning presidents (see why you cant be serious about being part of this world?) want to go on and on about how much they love Jesus, were all cool with it, because that sort of hypocrisy is what we call freedom here, in the liberated West, and watch out, were soon coming to a town near you to liberate you, too! When Christians talk about the world, its usually in the context of John 3:16 to let everybody know how much God loved the world, no matter how haywire it had gone. But we ignore the admonition of that same John a little later in the Bible for us not to love the world, nor the things in it. Thats a lot harder message to preach, brother, and if you do, just wait and see how many books youll be selling then! I like the way Bethany Dillon put it in one of her songs, Aimless, (and I strongly hope that she still knows what she was singing about): Theyve always known this wasnt home. Ive always known this wasnt home. How about you?

Prophetic Ingredient
May 3, 2010 by mcdozer

Im a firm believer in the fact that God can speak through just about anything and anyone, even people who are totally oblivious to their being used as a vessel for a higher, divine purpose. The movie Answer Man points out the principle of how God can use even anything but perfect people to speak to the world through them, often very much in spite of themselves, rather than because of any specially pious qualities on their part. In my free eBook project The Deeper Meaning of Everything thats precisely the point Im trying to stress: God speaks to us through everything. In my movie blog Talking Pictures I try to point the lessons I glean from the movies I watch, and I also firmly believe that God has sometimes inspired songwriters often totally unbeknownst to them to broadcast downright prophetic messages to the world through their songs. A few classic examples: Let It Be is, I believe, a prophetic song about the time of the end. When I find myself in times of trouble The Great Tribulation? Mother Mary in the song, in my opinion, represents the Holy Spirit, speaking words of wisdom. Later it says, Whisper words of wisdom, indicating that those words wont always be spoken out loudly from pulpits with microphones, but a cloudy night is coming, through which there will still be a light shining on those who believe, culminating in the great awakening to the sound of music (the last trump) at Jesus Return. I doubt that Paul McCartney was aware of any such divinely prophetic ingredient, since his ideology certainly seems to be an entirely different one. Bye Bye Miss American Pie also had a greater prophetic significance than Don McLean ever realized, if youve watched the development of pop music over the past 4 decades since that song was written, and

perhaps even he knows by now that The day the music died wasnt just the day Buddy Hollys plane crashed. I often joke that it was the day Madonna recorded that song. Then there was the 71 album Whos Next by The Who, a musical milestone, with their song, Wont Get Fooled Again, ending with the line that so perfectly describes the succession of the current administration to the previous: Meet the new boss! Same as the old boss! Ive even seen people wearing t-shirts with that line on it in reference to Obama Maybe Ill come up with a list of other examples of songs with a touch of the prophetic In the movie Hurricane the statement is made that people dont find the books theyre looking for, but their books find them. In my life, pretty much the same applied to every song I felt magically drawn to. Even if at the time I first heard and started liking the song the meaning of the lyrics didnt seem to bear any resemblance or parallel to what was going on in my life, later on, it did, and I realized why that song had found me. Maybe youre too rational, dogmatic or restrictive to consider that God could possibly work in such ways, and certainly the theory of Evolution wouldnt lead to such a seemingly bizarre conclusion that our Creator should be involved in even such small details in our lives. Well, Jesus gave us a clue that Hes more into details than many of us may think when He said that every hair on our heads was numbered, and no sparrow falls the Father doesnt keep track of. So, next time you hear a song and you feel its tug on your heart strings, listen to what its got to say. Chances are the Author of Life Himself has a message to you.

Let It Rain! (Days of Noe)

May 3, 2010 by mcdozer

I used to wonder about this passage in Matthew 24: But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be (Mt.24:37-39).

I used to wonder, Why, Jesus, whats so bad about eating, drinking, marrying and giving in marriage? Why should that merit the end of the world? But if you take a closer look at peoples eating, drinking and mating habits, you get the point. While 40.000 starve daily in one part of the world, obesity is becoming a major disease in another. While in one place people dont even have enough drinking water to survive, in another they drink themselves to death. Its the imbalance, the selfishness that matters and makes it so ugly the unwillingness of the rich to share, and their sickening, self-indulging indifference. And then theres the mating game. A whole nuther story. Have you ever frequented a dating site? Like in a civilized, Western country? I once wrote an entry about the devaluation of human life in reference to what some nations are willing to pay for the corpse of a butcher as compared to what theyre willing to eke out for the corpse of his victim Well, youll see the devaluation of human life (along with the sheer absence of human intelligence) nowhere as blatantly as on a dating site. Here they present themselves like merchandise in a supermarket, and mind you, the customers are picky. Looking for Mr. Right or the perfect man or woman, the girl of my dreams, etc. Whereas members of less developed countries are a lot more modest. Perhaps one day the world will see the difference between so-called civilization and truly civilized people, among whom respect is still a given, and courtesy not a Huh, whats that? Not to mention that in the entire process of feverishly trying to obtain the objects of their affection that might quench their burning needs (or lusts?), the most important Factor is as usual left out of the equation almost entirely: the Giver of all things in the first place. Maybe thats why Jesus said not labour for the meat which perisheth although everybody of course, keeps doing it, even the most devout of His followers. Of course, it would be a sacriliege and the epitome of political incorrectness to preach anything different, for mans greatest religion and god has become the work of his own hands. After all, the work of his own hands is what will earn him those most desired shreds of paper in the universe, which Jesus said we couldnt serve, if we served God,;and those, in return, will by us foood, drrrink, and will help us to impress the other sex (either by means of taunting our apparel and plastic surgery, or our vehicles, houses and yachts). In short: materialism. Since everything begins (evolution) and ends (lifeless corpse in coffin) with mere lifeless matter which is supposed to have brought forth itself, the space between the beginning and the end, that which we refer to

as life, revolves around the same: lifeless matter. In other words, not really life at all, since the one thing that gives life, as Jesus said, is Spirit (John 6:63), coincidentally, the same stuff that God Himself is made of (John 4:24). Its not that I dont like to eat, drink or am not totally amazed by the opposite sex. Nor do I try to pretend to come across as some sort of spiritual wonder child, since Im subject to the same desires and needs as everybody else. Its just that the way we go about it and still have the nerve to call civilized, to me comes across as rather barbaric. If thats what brought on the flood (along with many other evils that find their modern counterparts), then let it rain, Lord, let it rain!

Love Is Forever
May 3, 2010 by mcdozer

Another passage from the Scriptures that never made quite sense to me was Matthew 6:22-23: The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness! Especially the last bit, If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness I know, all the humanists and believers in the good in mankind will howl at me, but I think I figured out what it means. If youve ever been betrayed by someone you believed in, forsaken by someone you fully trusted in and relied on, someone who was like a light in your life, and they drop you so abruptly that you suddenly

realize that the light you confided in for so long was only an illusion, then youll know what this passage means. Darkness is the absence of light. In other words, the light wasnt ever really there, you mistook it for the real thing, and the person in question may have believed in it as the real thing, but what determines whether its real or not is whether it lasts. Because one thing I have always believed is that love is forever. If it isnt forever, then it wasnt real love in the first place. The level of emotion will not always remain the same, naturally, but there is one ingredient that will make all the difference in the world, between real love and the fake: faithfulness. The Bible says that if youve been put in charge of anything by God, there is only one thing that is required of you: to be faithful. You may not have a lot of strength, you may not have a lot of gifts, you may not be nothing much at all, but you are one thing, and that is faithful. That is the one tiny spark that makes all the difference in the universe between the real light and the fake, between true love and that which many people may mistake for love. It may not seem like much at all, but apparently, thats what makes the difference. After the love has gone, what is there left to believe in? Apparently far less people have that real, lasting kind of love in them in our world today than we may think, which is why there is so much heartache, disappointment and so many broken relationships and marriages. Too many shiny fake versions of love that promise happiness in exchange for that seemingly insignificant ingredient we despise, that has almost vanished from our vocabulary: that tiny little factor of faithfulness. Love is forever. Everything else is only a fake. Jesus knew that there were people who believed themselves to be benefactors of mankind, oh, and they can be radiant, and that light in their eyes may sparkle deceivingly real. But when their light is gone, just as quickly as you turn off a light switch, then you know it was only an artificial fake after all, no real love, real light. The sad thing is that it usually takes time to find this out. Sometimes quite a long time, in fact. Time is the great tester, and it certainly is the factor that will prove our degree of faithfulness, and thus, the degree of authenticity of our love. Some actually have it, and some actually dont. Its shocking when you realize that that light was never really there, and you find out in shock what Jesus meant If the light in you is darkness, how great is that darkness! This type of people can wreak quite a bit of devastation in ones life. For all they give, they subtly demand more in return, more dependence, more devotion, almost like an addiction, like a drug.

You may think youre receiving their light, but since it isnt really real, but only a fake, it doesnt bear fruit, youve only invested in darkness, poured your life into a vessel with holes and are ultimately left empty, sucked dry and devastated Theyre probably the closest thing to vampires in the real world. They may not suck your blood, but drain your lifes energy out of you, and the hollow shell they leave behind will be a sad reminder that it pays to put your trust in Someone Greater than frail flesh and blood, and blessed are they who do, indeed.

Insights from the Belly of the Whale

May 16, 2010 by mcdozer

Salvation is of the Lord! Those were the magic words that got Jonah out of the belly of the whale (Jonah 2.9). Jesus prophetically compared Jonahs experience inside the whale to the three days he would spend in Hades between His crucifixion and resurrection. He also invited His followers to take up their cross upon themselves and follow Him. In other words, every true believer is going to go through their own experience in the belly of the whale at one time or another, experience their own 3 days in hell. And its usually not until we realize that salvation is truly of the Lord, that we emerge from it. Whats so special about that revelation, that salvation is of the Lord? Because before we find out, we try to save ourselves by any thinkable and possible means. The Lord is always our last resort, after all else has failed. Usually, anyway. We first expect our own wits, strengths and efforts to save us, and if they wont do, then at least some tangible, visible and audible person of flesh and blood to pull us out, and sometimes, God in His mercy will send such a person along. But if Hes been trying to teach you to rely on Him and Him alone, and

you have any sort of rank or validity as a prophet, even a disobedient prophet like Jonah, you can be pretty sure therell be no other hand pulling you out of that whale except Gods. When God has become truly all that you have got left, then thats where you can probably safely say, Welcome to Rock Bottom Club! When everyone else is gone, every other crutch kicked away, those people who have made you depend on them like a drug only stand by and watch you go through your withdrawals from afar while getting the next junkie in line hooked on them, then its time to find out whether God is really enough or not. It will prove whether your faith was merely a pretty bubble that popped at the introduction of the needle, reduced to a little splash in the face, or whether it was something solid, something your life can depend on. If were honest, the role to which we often restrict God in our lives is not much more than a slap in His face. Its those belly-of-the-whale experiences that restore Him to His proper position in our life as our only hope, our only true Savior. When the fakes are gone and have faded away, its time for the true Savior to step in and show that it is in His power alone to save, and Cursed be the man that trusteth in man and maketh flesh his arm (Jer.17:5). Down there, in the belly of the whale, you find out who your friends really are. And once the fish has vomited you out, back on dry land, you may not feel like much more than just that: a pile of fish vomit, but at least youve got a much clearer perspective now of your world around you and who and what you can really rely on, without all the deceiving appearances and delusions that blurred your vision previously. You may have tried to figure out every possible way, tactic and maneuver out of the dark, going through all the possible tricks, measures or merely lucky events that might save you out of your fix, but in the end, the sum of your wisdom boiled down to this: Salvation is of the Lord. No one and nothing else will ever cut the cake or do the trick. No one.

Jesus Anonymous
May 16, 2010 by mcdozer

Through a close friend, Ive recently been allowed a glimpse into world of the Anonymous Recovery Groups, and while it is one of these groups principles not to rely on advertisement to flourish, I would like to share some thoughts and lessons Ive gleaned from my acquaintance with them, and from my many discussions with my friend about them. As Christians, it has been drilled into us that it is expedient to do whatever we do in the name of Christ, and it is my belief that salvation from our sins and death is found in no other, as the Bible states. Yet here is a program that seems to be accomplishing a world of good, yet without calling it Christian or associating it with Jesus, even accomplishing the salvation of tens of thousands from physical addictions, but also what one might call spiritual problems, even if this may be a slightly different matter than the spiritual Salvation the Bible refers to. The honesty, openness and depth of conversation within these groups is something I dont think Ive ever experienced in a church or even during Home gatherings, meetings or in Bible groups. After all, Christians are usually people who have their act somewhat together, at least more, on a general scale, than those that attend Anonymous groups. Having a common problem that provides a common basis for Anonymous group members to come together presents from my point of view an advantage that many churches and Christian movements dont: the humility, the readiness to open themselves concerning a weakness, thus ready to attack sin head on in a way one will hardly ever find in a church where people often play a masquerade for years, one hardly ever gets to know their brethren on a truly personal level, and all that connects one another is the fact that they just listened to the same sermon, sang a few of the same songs, etc. The question Ive had to ask myself as a Christian was, is it possible that God instigates movements on earth that may not be able to be defined clearly as Christian? Apparently, yes. Is it possible that these non-Christian movements can sometimes bring forth more and somewhat even perhaps better fruit than some obvious Christian movement or church? Apparently, yes. It reminded me of the passage in which Jesus talks about those who prophesied in His name, cast out devils in His name, etc., (and mind you, one has to be a Spirit-filled and born again Christian, in order to cast out devils!), and yet telling them, I never knew you. Yet in another passage welcoming those who

all they ever did was visit the prisoners, care for the sick, feed the hungry, no matter in whose name. Apparently Jesus does not mind whether what we do we do in His name as much as whether what we do is the right thing to do. Obviously, a lot of wrongs have already been committed in His name, as it is. Apparently God is more concerned about genuinely helping people than He is about the advertisement, and whether it was done on His behalf or not. Imagine you were God and had to watch how people slaughtered each other by the millions for millennia on His behalf Wouldnt you be glad if someone eventually came around who gave you a break and just did something good, no matter in whose name, or in no ones name in particular? Yes, the name of Jesus is important and powerful, and it is our duty to spread the good news that He indeed saves. But apparently there is something even more important in Gods eyes than what we say and preach, and that is what we do. God seems to avail Himself of any program that works, and the 12-Steps programs have proven to work in millions of changed lives around the world, and God doesnt seem to care much whether this has been accomplished under the flag of Christianity. If a program works, youll use it. You install it, run it and enjoy the benefits. Totally regardless of whatever it says on the package, or what brand name it is. One would have to ask themselves to what extent Christ Himself would consider Himself a Christian, if He were to walk among us today. Maybe in the light of all thats being said and done in His name, He might even prefer to remain anonymous.

Race of Addicts
August 5, 2010 by mcdozer

In the science fiction TV series Deep Space 9, one of the offshoots of the Star Trek saga, one of the most significant parties in the plot is a mysterious master race of shapeshifters called the Dominion, also referred to as the Founders, who all live together in a great sea called the Great Link in their liquid state, making up one collective conscience, except when they happen to be on some mission to suppress and

dominate their quadrant and its inhabitants, for which purpose they can take on whichever form and shape they like. In order to protect themselves the Dominion created a genetically engineered race of warriors who live for nothing else but to fight and die to protect the Founders, their creators. In order to ensure their loyalty, the Founders equip their specially created species of bodyguards with an addiction to a drug which is provided by them and their henchmen, another race of diplomats who do most of their political dirty work for them. Its interesting to what extent some of these stories represent our reality, many times without our even being faintly aware of it. An increasing number of people are becoming aware of the fact that we are indeed, manipulated, dominated, exploited and enslaved by a diabolical group of people who are themselves subject to the demonic powers which the apostle Paul said are governing our world (Eph.6:12) and in order to ensure our loyalty to them, they have artificially equipped us with addictions that have been enhanced scientifically to get us to a point where we will only ever break free from their grip by nothing short of a miracle. While we have all been equipped from birth with certain needs and appetites by our creator: we all need food, clothing, shelter, and are driven to some degree by our natural urges to procreate, our modern society has enhanced these needs to a degree where what once used to be natural desires, have morphed into downright full-fledged destructive addictions. Our once natural appetite for food for many people has been transformed into addictions to artificially altered foods, enriched with chemical substances, refined sugars and flavours that cause them to crave them to the point of obesity, which is rapidly becoming a natioanl disease in some of our developed countries. What was once a generally natural drive to ensure the procreation of the human race has over the past 6 decades turned into every kind of perversion thinkable under the sun by means of bombarding us from the cradle to the grave with imagery aiming at triggering and feeding our lust, brainwashing us from preschool age into accepting sexual perversions as the norm and getting us all to think that sex is the most important thing in the world, right after money, of course, that is. Probably most of us never even realize that we are addicts until we get to the point where the object of our affection is being taken from us, and only then do we begin to realize how subtly but thoroughly the Dominion has performed their work on us. The deadly, venomous and highly addictive substabce has been pumped into our veins practically from the cradle, so that none of us would dare to veer from the straight and narrow path of obedience, obeisance and slavery to their cause. Every now and then, one of us is awakened to the graveness of their state, and when it happens, were usually shocked and anything but ready to deal with it. Its certainly helpful then to have Somebody by your side to help you combat the demons that pull your strings, and if possible to cut them loose. The withdrawals will be hard and painful, but still better than a continued life on the planet of the race of addicts much of the developed world presently constitutes.

Think about the Dominion and their addict warrior race and ponder whether youd want that to be your fate, or whether you shouldnt rather develop the strength of resistance and the ability to say no when temptation threatens to get you hooked. Everybody else around you may be a junkie, too, and it may look normal that everyones addicted to something. But, by God, it isnt.

Half-Time: Farewell Judgmentalism!

August 5, 2010 by mcdozer

In the search of the deeper meaning of everything, I have found that similar to a soccer game, our lives are usually somewhat divided into two half-times: There is that first, perhaps more energetic, but somewhat less mature half during which were prone to act a lot on our impulses and make a bunch of mistakes accordingly, and theres the latter half, during which we mature into a ripened personality and hopefully have learned some lessons from the former and tend to do things differently than we used to. Oddly enough, the same principle seems to apply to Gods church, body, or, as it has also been referred to, His bride. Theres an Old Testament way during which Gods people tended to call down fire and brimstone upon their opponents, sometimes drowning them in a universal flood and at others devouring them with fire, and then theres the New Testament approach of love. Sometimes you can tell that a movement really is anointed by God when it shows those same signs of maturation. While folks are often criticized for their opinions, it is usually so, that those opinions are really only the result of the input those folks have been fed. Once the opinions of the folks at grassroots level become too embarrassing for their leaders to want to be associated with them, some serious brainstorming takes place (in movements that are alive and flexible enough to do so, that is), about how best to avoid unwanted politically incorrect attitudes spread from among the followers.

Thus it can happen, that a once radical, white-hot, revolutionary and somewhat militant movement can mature into a wiser, more diplomatic one, just as it can happen that a once young and perhaps slightly overly zealous hot-head can finally come to his senses and calm down a wee bit and realize that it might be better to just live and let live instead of being a constant prick in everyones side. Of course, it helps if the leadership makes the first step and adjusts its own approach first and makes it clear that, That is the way we used to do things, and this is the way we do them now. Well, after one half-hearted attempt earlier this year to roll a new, more politically correct leaf over that sort of petered out, Im happy to announce that I hereby officially will bury all my differences of opinion I may have had with my fellow believers around the world, and I shall carefully try not to utter any more criticisms of any of them any longer. Theres a thin line between being not of this world, as Jesus told His disciples they were, and the fact that God so loved that world that He gave His own Son for it, not to condemn the world, but to save it. Perhaps even God Himself has gone through a process that made Him change methods and approaches somewhere along the line In any case, you wont hear anymore rants about lukewarmness, half-heartedness or proneness to materialism or any other sicknesses of society on this blog, nor any other judgmental statements that might only create further barriers between parties, instead of eradicating them. Sometimes God gives us more relevant things to worry about than trying to figure out how we can take on and challenge the whole world at once. Its not as if the entire experience would have been useless. After all, we still do read the Old Testament. But the New One is a whole lot more relevant, and when its time for a change and a new direction, its just simply that. Sometimes it takes half a life-time to get there. Sometimes more.

Power of Two
August 12, 2010 by mcdozer

Ive always believed in the power of two. Well, nearly always. Sometimes youre actually better off alone than with the wrong company. But basically, when youve got 2 souls with more or less the same vision and goals, according to the Old Testament, it quintuples a persons strength in battle. The problem is that when youve gotten used to this modus operandi of two-by-two, when one of your motors flunks out, and youre stuck again on your own, it reduces your power back to one fifth of what by then you might have gotten used to. So, you feel pretty much reduced to a sausage. Folks whove undergone separation will know what Im talking about. The others wont have a clue, just as I didnt until it happened to me. The power of two is great, but dont necessarily rely on it as infallible, because as long as theres another human involved, you simply need to take into consideration that this is only a temporary arrangement, even if you happen to be as lucky to have found someone who meant what they said when they swore, Till death do us part. There is still that uncontrollable death factor. But even that is probably not as painful as when someone youve fought lifes battles with for many a season deliberately makes the choice to turn their back on you. Christ was supposed to have been tempted in all things as we are. Unfortunately we dont know enough about His 30 years of life prior to His public ministry to tell whether there was ever physically anybody in His life whom He loved so much that they broke His heart when they decided to live their life without Him. All we know is that throughout history Hes had a wife (also referred to as His Bride) that probably put Him through the same thing time and again, which is vividly illustrated in the act of God commanding His prophet Hosea to take a prostitute for a wife as a metaphor of the unfaithfulness of His own Old Testament wife. Later in the Book of Revelation we find similar metaphors of whores and churches who sit like a queen, apparently lacking nothing, and yet not knowing that in Gods eyes theyre naked and destitute of the things that apparently really count to Him.

So, to which degree we as Gods wife and bride have broken His heart is hard to tell. One thing is for sure: when youve gone through such pain yourself, you wouldnt ever want to inflict it on anybody else again. Loyalty all of a sudden becomes paramount, when previously it may have been quite irrelevant. Not only the loyalty of others toward ourselves, but also our own toward others and especially God. How loyal have we really been? The only explanation for God putting us through the wringer at times like that, where it seems as though He deliberately devastates us by simply withdrawing the person that meant most to us in the world is that we dont really have a clue about loyalty, especially not our own, as far as Hes concerned. Its simply not enough of an issue until we learn to appreciate it by the excruciating pain that can be caused by the absence of it. Only once we realize what pain can be caused by broken loyalty are we able to begin to relate to what it means to God, and do we even begin to realize how often we haphazardly switched loyalties for the sake of some advantage, some shiny fruit on a tree, some compromise for the sake of our personal welfare or benefit, some temptation we couldnt resist Perhaps thats why it often takes quite long for the pain of betrayal and desertion to linger on: Its only the beginning of our personal lesson on loyalty. Were only just starting to see how guilty we have been of the same crime that now we feel we cant forgive someone else for, and not just once, but probably innumerable times. Loyalty, like so many other values that used to mean something before our society was taken over by the universally accepted as politically correct Western do-your-own- thing dogma, has gone down the drain in this strange new world order, where the only loyalty that counts is to make sure that you dont move an inch from the place youre assigned in the Machine. The System needs to continue to function, and that is your foremost responsibility. Human relations, by comparison, are irrelevant. Rubbish! you say (Or, if youre American, you might be prone to use another word that starts with bull.!)? Well, good for you, if thats your reality, and if human relationships still mean enough to you to value them above your personal rank, position or economic advantage. But realistically, youre part of a shrinking minority. And if youve got loyalty and you know what it means, for the sake of God and all that is dear to your own soul, hold on to it with all your might and never underestimate it for a moment. In the end, it may be all that determines whether you lost or won your personal battle in this war. Or, as the Eagles put it in their song In A New York Minute which so aptly portrays what can be the fate of all of us at any time: If you find somebody to love in this world, you better hang on tooth and nail!

Thoughts on Loyalty, Soul Mates & Avarice

December 24, 2010 by mcdozer

I cant get over the loyalty thing. Compare it to someone who has never wasted a second thought about trucks until one fine day he gets run over by one, or about terrorists, until he is being abducted or something Something you never devoted attention to, all of a sudden becomes paramount.

If you look at it from a spiritually historical point of view, all the evil in the world falls back down onto a loyalty issue, namely Lucifers. If he had remained loyal, there would be no sin, and accordingly, most likely, no evil. But I guess that wasnt the plan. After all, those lessons on loyalty must be learned eventually

Another issue I never wasted a second thought on for decades, or that I had simply put in a mental drawer of does not exists or there is no such thing, is that of soul mates. A year ago or two I met a Christian couple who told me they believed they were each others soul mates. Interesting, I thought, but as far as I was concerned, there couldnt really have been such a thing. (In my particular situation, it was always, Maybe youre not; maybe you are) Relationships were just bound to be messy, thats all, I figured, and the Soul Mates thing was a nice thought, and I was happy for them, but my personal reality was a different one.

Was.

Strangely enough, God often uses the darkest nights in our lives only to bring about a sunrise as bright and golden as you had never before thought possible in this earthly life in an, after all, often questionable world, obviously temporarily run by His adversary. I know now there is such a thing as Soul Mates, because lo and behold, Ive found mine. Not exactly where I would have been looking for her, but then, life is always full of surprises. Maybe youll hear more about this in the future.

Yet another topic my mind is currently dealing with is the sin of avarice.

Imagine you were the Creator and Father of every living soul and would have to watch how over ten thousand of them were starving to death daily because their richer brothers and sisters were simply too stingy to share even a fraction of their overly proportionate wealth with them, making it their philosophy that the world would actually be better off with a significantly smaller population. I bet it would certainly become an issue to you. Living in a country where big corporations even advertise their relatively low-priced goods with slogans like Stinginess is cool! (Geiz ist geil!), as usual Im probably a lone voice (of widely considered insanity) in the wilderness even wasting a thought on such issues, let alone web space, but I simply cannot leave any potential serious seekers of truth dwelling in the illusion that everything is just fine with us and our world. People always blame God for the suffering of the world, when it becomes clear, after taking off our spectacles of self-righteousness, that its really largely the evil in our own hearts thats responsible for it. Maybe some day well find out that even natural disasters are being caused by our own bad vibes that were spewing off into the ether. I wouldnt be a bit surprised. Anyway, these are, as always, just a few thoughts from a mole whos just breaking through the end of a long dark tunnel into the light, in an attempt to cheer up any of those out there still digging: Folks, theres light at the other end, and its worth it!

Trusting God for a Living

December 24, 2010 by mcdozer

Usually Ive answered the question, What do you do for a living? by saying, By playing music, which was usually met with an unbelieving, questioning look as if to say, Youre serious? But the longer I think about it, its not entirely true. Playing music was only a small part of what I do for a living, and Im afraid, the part that sounds more believable. The main part Ive done for a living over the past 30 years, ever since I left my mothers home in 1980, was even more outrageous and less believable that play music. What Ive mostly done over the past 3 decades to sustain myself and my families, was to trust the Lord. Often Ive been trying to get away from that, and been looking for ways to be able to do just like everybody else: be comfortably relying on my own strengths and wit and fend for myself, as opposed to depending on some obscure, invisible Supreme Being we really know rather little about to be trusting Him with all our bills, our meals and a roof over our house. Oddly enough, obscure and invisible or not, He has chosen to do so anyway, and has just been doing it (seeing to it that our bills were paid, moths fed, etc.), despite my own often less than appropriate skills and abilities to provide, and even the shocking fact that most of what I do in order to make it happen when I do, is play music. It was outrageous enough, but infinitely less difficult back 30 years ago, in 1980, when I was young, optimistic and the world had not yet been drowned in the type of plastic entertainment that has managed to make them practically allergic to actual handcrafted music in the 21st century. The doors were open wide, and it was easy to be optimistic that things were going to just keep getting better. There were situations that looked desperate, yes; like the time our car broke down right on the main transit street through Barcelona, and we had to unhook the trailer, park in a tiny little side niche on the side of the road which became our home for the next few days. Me and my American partner Phillip took our guitars to the streets and did what we could to little avail, except for the pity of some merciful old lady that would occasionally toss a tiny coin in our guitar case. But at one point, some guy came up to us, interrupted us in the middle of a song, and after a few minutes we found ourselves booked for a whole week in an exclusive club called Incontro. A week later, our car was fixed and we rolled on southward.

A year later I found myself having to fend for myself in Vina del Mar, Chile, a place where the familiar luxuries of Europe were frighteningly absent, but even there God did what I couldnt and supplied abundantly for all the needs I ever had. Years later I found myself with a family, kids to feed and bills to pay, and God kept doing it. Lately Ive found myself having to fend for myself again, and its 3 decades later and the world has changed into a state that sometimes makes me wonder, Alas, is the Almighty still going to manage and keep doing IT? Well, as of the news I got from Him this morning, He obviously intends to do so. Good news for me, since Im just about as clueless about the business world and the art of making money as Ive ever been and that in the middle of the world in which just about everyone else does that and absolutely nothing or at least not much else. The good part about it being that God, over the years, has become a little less obscure and unknown to me, even though I admit, its still sometimes a little hard to see Him in all the hubbub and confusion all around me, and every now and then it does cost me a little effort to trust that Hes really serious or in His right mind about it all or whether I am, until He assures me, as usual, that everythings going to be alright. In fact, Hes not crazy at all, nor does He want me to believe that I am, but actually encourages me to let others know that He wants to take care of them and their needs, too, as unbelievable as that may sound. When it all comes down to it, He already provides all we need in the first place: every breath of oxygen we breathe, every swig of water we drink, along with all the raw material for our food, nourishment and fuel to keep our vehicles moving and out houses warm and lit. Its just that instead of granting Him the credit for it, we prefer to ascribe all that benevolence to an even more obscure and questionable deity, namely coincidence or chance, that brought about all that opulence simply by itself. Man, are we one lucky species to be alive! So, what do I do for a living? Well, mainly, I trust the Lord. Ive done it yesterday and 30 years ago, am doing it today, and will keep on doing it tomorrow and for as long as I live. I can do no other. I simply havent learned anything else.

One More Christmas

December 24, 2010 by mcdozer

Well, since we all enjoy a good round of gossip, Ill let you have a delicious swig of some with this one: Im pretty backslidden! At least from my good intentions to stay or become politically correct earlier this year, as I unfortunately will have to prove with this post. A few years back we still had once-a-week Christians: Even if you didnt see or hear any sign of your fellow brethren throughout the week, you could be sure to meet them somewhere among the pews on Sundays. That Christianity may be in somewhat of a decline again may be assumed by the fact that the surge of once-a-year Christians is becoming alarmingly evident. Folks you never heard of for 364 days straight, now will at least send you their Christmas emails as a reminder that there was something you had in common, namely the celebration of the birth of Baby Jesus. The notorious party pooper I am perhaps, I was never all too fond of that sort of relationship, religion, tradition, or whatever youd like to call it (since it couldnt possibly be called anything like genuine friendship) While it is probably better to hear from (some) folks once a year than never at all, what takes a bit of the magic out of the whole thing is that it does come across as somewhat stereotype. Blame it on my distaste for any type, shape or form of ritualism ever since I got an overdose of Catholicism as a boy that quickly drove me to atheism (if God was like that: no thanks!), but I just cant get warm with people using the same words over and over and over again to express something which seems to represent the very role you played in their lives over the previous dozen of months, the equivalent of which, in numerical terms would be zero.

So, heres to all the zeroes of the world who are only remembered by their friends and relatives on that special day on which we celebrate the event that marks the year Zero And if you feel like a zero, cheer up! The Guy born that day didnt amount to much more in terms of bank accounts, Facebook friends and followers on Twitter, either, latest by the time He hung on that cross 33 years later, when He was able to count the friends He still had left that day on the fingers of one hand with room to spare So, nevermind if Im not sending any of you any Christmas greetings this year: I only mean to do you a favor. If I didnt write you all year long, then shame on me. But I certainly wouldnt want to make matters worse by sending you a mass mail equal to the ones from previous years, not to mention those of the dears who had exactly the same idea or lack thereof I might send you a note on Holy Friday, though, to remind you that even when you dont have a friend in the world left, theres always Someone Who knows exactly what youre going through, and that that was the purpose for which He had been born: to be there for you when no one else will be. The time may come. You may not see it now, but at the rate not only (true) Christianity, but things like lasting friendship and interhuman relationship are on the decline, dont be too shocked if it might even happen to you one of these days Merry Christmas!

Remember AquaMan?
June 23, 2011 by mcdozer (Note: McDozers first post from China)

If anyone would have told me around this time last year that in twelve months time Id be teaching English at a variety of colleges inChina, I dont know what I would have done.

Maybe I would have broken out into laughter, or started to feel severely dizzy with a troubling pain between my ears. But fate has its twisted little ways at times, and since my wife was twice denied entry to what I have since come to call the Schengen zoo, and my dream of forming an acoustic trio consequently had to be put on ice, after 3 decades of raking in a living with my guitar Ive had to change professions, along with continents and locations, and have since become an English teacher in China. Sometimes we get to a point of stagnation in our lives where we think we know and have seen it all. But then the great Celestial Wizard (I have to be more careful with religious vocabulary these days) waves His magic wand, takes us out of our familiar environment into a totally new & different one (my definition of China: same earth, different planet) and sits us in front of His great big celestial record player to the sound of the 70s tune by the Canadian band Bachman, Turner, Overdrive, You Aint Seen Nuthin Yet. Mr. Know-It-All becomes Johnny Clueless, and has to prove all over again whether he ever really meant a thing about all the things he preached to others about learning from life, leaving it all behind and the whole follow-the-great-Celestial-Wizard sort of spiel. Things can get awfully silent around folks like that in these situations, and thats why you havent heard from me in a while. Besides, life is a lot busier for English teachers in China with a fraction of the wages for musicians in Europe. Especially during rainy season. My wife told me today (and as every man would, I love it when she does), Youre my hero. Not that I actually feel heroic, but in this case she was right: I had just approved myself as a super hero. Remember Aquaman? The guy who commanded the element of water? Well, thats who I felt like today (for the second time this month, by the way), after just having been drenched within seconds during a sudden torrent (the sort of which makes one wonder whatever happened to that rainbow promise once given to a man named Noah) while riding my e-bike home from College. Drenched to the bone we found shelter under the roof of a hotel entrance (along with other unlucky bikers like ourselves), and were soon off to get a little more soaked before we finally got home Getting drenched inChina is a great thing to happen to folks who used to be fed up with their semiorganized, neat little lives in way too organized countries Its as if Big CW (Celestial Wizard) grabbed a gigantic bucket of water and emptied it out over your head, saying, Wake up, dude! You were only dreaming! Yes, I once dreamed that I knew something about the world I live in, and have woken up to the refreshing reality of my utter ignorance in a part of the world I knew next to nothing about.

So, if you should ever feel intellectually bloated and as if there were no more challenges, no new worlds to conquer, dont be fooled! You aint seen nuthin yet, and theres always room for another super hero in China!

Imposed Realism
August 7, 2011 by mcdozer

The other night we watched the movie Waiting for Forever about a boy who had been in love with his childhood girlfriend since they were 10 and officially lost touch when his parents died in a train accident and he and his brother moved to their grandparents. As he grows older, though, he follows the love of his youth wherever her professional career takes her, himself making a living of 3 dollars a day (on a good day) as a juggler dressed in pyjamas. Although this wasnt the best film I watched of late (for instance, there was the excellent 2010 film Fair Game, which gives further insight into the insanity thats still being perpetrated in Iraq), Waiting for Forever moved me most. Not so much because of the plot, but because of the fact that I was watching it with my 28 year old wife who might never get to know the kind of culture that grants a fellow the liberty to make a very unstable living on 3 bucks a day as a juggler, traveling wherever his dream would take him. Although the boy in the movie was met with heavy criticism from his older brother (a banker), and was being called a stalker, and despite the fact that his kind is a dying breed in the West, at least we have come to know that sort of a culture, while other countries, such as the one Im currently residing in, probably never will. Though the culture whose hospitality Im currently enjoying is by no means an exclusive example of what Id like to call the imposed realism that not only political leaders, but even more so cultural and traditional elders seem to feel obligated to circumcise their offsprings dreams and ideals with, it is definitely an outstanding example. You cannot just marry the man or girl you love. Any man that intends to marry is expected to have a house first. My wife has told me of an experience in a Shanghai park where she watched hundreds of elderly couples looking for suitable spouses for their daughters (or sons) with a list of criteria in hand that any potential candidate would have to live up to; criteria primarily based on income.

A juggler making 3 bucks a day wouldnt stand an chance in hell to get married under that set of conditions. It might me hard in the West, but just about impossible in the East. Of course, when I was a young lad back in Germany, I got to hear much of the same tune from my folks. Not that they would have expected of me to be able to buy a house before I started messin round with the opposite sex, but I was repeatedly advised to get a good education to secure a solid existence for myself. When I came home one day telling them that I met a group of people who were foolowing Jesus, and that one day I would like to do the same, they were naturally horrified. In the meantime they have accepted my somewhat loose, though not entirely carefree life-style, and my father, having seen his own supposedly solid existence and career go down the drain due to fluctuations and instability in the economy has told me since that I made the right choice when I set out to do what I did. In the West, though, parents have their existence taken care of by retirement insurances, and both my parents are currently better off with their pensions than I am as an English teacher in the Far East, where the only old-age insurance elderly parents have got are their children and their respective incomes, so its somewhat understandable that they want their kids to be able to care for them. Many young people live under a lot of pressure because of that responsibility. Then again, my reasoning is that many things in life are simply beyond our control. Everything is potentially subject to drastic and unexpected changes: death, illness or financial and economic disaster can hit anyone at any time, and what power does anyone really have, to effectively impose their own little reality on anyone in the long run, even their kids? When Jesus went around luring established young men with flourishing businesses away from their homes and responsibilities telling them He would make them fishers of men, certainly He wasnt met with strong enthusiasm on behalf of those mens families. For all we know, some of them (like Peter) were even married and possibly had children. What an irresponsible thing to do, to just walk off with a perfect stranger of questionable reputation, Messiah or not And from a realists point of view, that criticism may well be justified: 10 of those young men ended up as martyrs, one committed suicide, and only one died of natural causes on an island where he exiled by the Romans. Their philosophies and beliefs as expressed in their writings are questionable to this day, and even most believers only accept those parts of the Gospels that they can reconcile with the consensus of the imposed realism of our day and age. The first rule and law is not to love one another, but to secure ones own existence, which, as the Founder of their faith claimed, is no different from what unbelievers adhere to. So, what would be making a difference then? Trust. The people who really made a difference throughout history were those who despite all the seemingly rhyme-less reality all around us never ceased to trust that there was Someone ultimately in charge Who not only knew what He was doing, but was also going to take care of them, provide for them, and help them through this mess somehow.

In my own personal experience, I can only confirm that to be true, and I would strive for nothing more than to go down in history as one of those trusters who refuse to accept the artificially imposed realism from those around us even our loved ones no matter how justified their reasoning may seem; a person known for the belief that there is a greater Mind than even the wisest of our parents, how ever strange some of the things may first sound that this Great Mind may ask of us much like a Parent Himself, asking His children to trust Him for the things they do not know, which basically is the essence of faith the one currency that will outlast any of our existing ones.

Pushing for the World Domination of Bankruptcy

October 29, 2011 by mcdozer

In June, immediately after she stopped nursing her 19 months old daughter JiaJia, my Chinese wife became pregnant. As a German citizen, I would have had the right to apply to a special visa for my wife in order to have our child delivered in Germany evading the current restrictions that didnt allow her to enter the EU in the first place, such as the condition that she learn German first and absolve a language exam, etc. However, there was no sign from the Top that it was part of our Makers plan for us to go there, and at times I still keep wondering why. My life as a musician was easier, more enjoyable and often more inspiring than my current life as an English teacher in a country that may well be the noisiest in the world, and sadly, one of the filthiest. But having a teacher has its advantages. Other than in the West, where teachers have the image of The Enemy in probably 90% of their students, my new profession is a respected one here, and Ive been told repeatedly, even after this relatively short time, that Ive touched and affected my students lives, and perhaps more so than I was able to on a personal level as a musician. Then there is the political aspect. I love Western culture, and by Western I mean the same that 95% of the world mean when they say Western: The American culture. And Im not talking about the main stream culture, the Britneys and

Lady Gagas that only put a stamp on Don McLeans fulfilled prophecy about the day the music died. Im talking about artists of the kind you dont even hear in Europe unless youre really into music: Patty Griffin, Richard Julien and the galore of Christian bands and singers that are basically nobodies in the world of showbiz, but constitute a large part of my inspiration since years: Caedmons Call, Jeremy Camp, Jill Phillips and her husband Andy Gullahorn and oodles of others. I love to listen to their music and sometimes I dream of a world in which I would be able to communicate with people that are even remotely on a similar wavelength to mine, who are able to speak more than the very, very broken English of most of my students (not to mention the majority of the large population around me), but what are the options? Subscribe to a policy that is based on murdering our fellow humans in far-off lands on grounds that not even the bravest of the outlawed preachers and self-declared revolutionaries for Christ dare to doubt even though theyre proven to be totally ridiculous? Or for that matter Which of the wars that America the great leader of our great and glorified Western culture has fought for the past 6 decades could have really be called justified from a point of view that even remotely resembles the teachings of Christ? Korea? Vietnam? Sure, they wanted to stop Communism. Perhaps at one point they realized that a more effective way would be to apply the slogan, If you cant lickem, joinem and infiltrate the enemy with McDonalds and Coke, as I see here, the possibly most capitalistic country Ive ever been to, thats officially Communist. And if so for what? What is it that Big Brother or Uncle Sam is pushing on us? Whats so wonderful that they just cant stop pushing it down the throat of the rest of the world? Certainly not Patty Griffin With a foreign debt of cosmic proportions its even ridiculous that the rest of the world keeps looking up to America as its great white hope, a dream and fairy tale that only becomes reality in one place for a limited time, namely a time-span of approximately 100 to 180 minutes on the TV and movie screens around the world. The American Dream made in Hollywood. As far as the bitter reality is concerned, all that every administration from Nixon to Obama has been pushing like a heroin dealer dressed up like Santa Claus has been the inevitable death by overdose: The world domination of bankruptcy. What world would possibly be easier to rule than one of bankrupt suckers who dont have a dime, whose money all went up into thin air, invested in some spoof concocted by some real smart wise asses, only to land all the power thinkable in the hands of a tiny clan who had the balls to lie and lie, and then lie some more, until it made Pinocchios nose look like a pimple in comparison? I dont know whether this far end of the world is going to be any safer when the shit hits the fan possibly not. But its not just an issue of safety and survival. Its an issue of dignity. Id sure hate to wake up in the middle of all those wise asses who actually thought that their country was going to save the world while they were all pumping their tax money into making the exact opposite happen. They say ignorance is bliss. Theres a lot of ignorance going on all around me right now. They dont have a clue. But there is yet another extreme, and a whole nuther story, and thats when people blatantly defy

the truth, because they just cant stand to hear it. And thats precisely where I dont want to wake up when the shit hits the fan. And hit the fan it will. I guess the Boss knows what Hes doing in telling me to better stay put

Remembering Flatland
October 29, 2011 by mcdozer

When Edwin A. Abbott wrote his strongly allegorical novel Flatland in the 1880s, about a twodimensional land whose inhabitants vehemently and strictly opposed any thought or talk of the possibility of any other realm outside their own, he prophetically described the international science community of the 20th and (thus far, the) 21st centuries. What the vast majority of the science community does and has been doing is to strictly limit its discoveries and research to its own physical realm, punishing those who dared to venture beyond with marginalization and exile from the scope of their recognition and acceptance. Like the Flatlanders in Abbotts story, they strictly refuse to accept the possibility of the existence of any other realm beyond their perceivable and tangible own, which in my humble opinion, isnt exactly a very scientific approach, and comparable to their predecessors attitude in the days before Columbus, when they thought the earth was flat No new realms, much less new dimensions to discover. Its as if they saw their job as building a mental prison (Matrix) for their community of believers (for what else have they created than another faith in the dogma, There is no other?), restricting their existence to the realm in which they dwell while their bodies remain alive. They also stubbornly refuse to acknowledge the fact that information does not come about by itself.

Since the discovery of the inner life of living cells, their intricacy and complexity, it has become known that a highly complex exchange of coded information takes place in every living cell. Every letter, note, telegram, email, phone-call, book or other shred of information given since the beginning of time has been known to require an author. And yet the science community forces its subjects to believe that the gigantic amount of complex information and the exchange thereof taking place within living cells is all supposed to have come about by itself no author required, or, as Ben Stein put it, No Intelligence Allowed! Or, in other words, the Architect has been expelled from His own house, leaving that house in a very sad, darkened, only pseudo-enlightened state, where the enlightened ones come up with concocted fairy-tale excuses to wreak havoc on weaker countries around the world, slaughter their inhabitants in the name of freedom and democracy and even in the name of a God Whose existence they actually strongly deny in their public schools, education system and science community. The Flatlanders of the 21st century have reached a level of bigotry and hypocrisy that Abbott never would have deemed possible, Im sure. So, why is God allowed on the political battlefield, and used as an excuse or incentive for one Nation to exterminate another, while His existence at the same time is strongly denied in that same nations sacred halls of higher learning? Probably because they figure the only thing God is good for is to use Him for their own selfish and massmurderous plans. They would never ever grant Him credit for having created the vastness of the universe. No, they say, That was coincidence! He was the One Who placed them in their high office and gave them the authority to push the red button that would signify the death of untold thousands of (in reality) innocent victims (accused of acts of terrorism, or at least intended ones, of course), but He certainly wasnt capable of creating the world as it is in the first place. No, aliens probably did that. They came here gazillions of years ago and left the necessary information for our evolution somewhere in the dust. Let them worry about where they came from Some even higher race fom yet another galaxy, perhaps. But a Creator from a Realm outside of and even vaster than our physical universe? Taboo! The credentials of our enlightenment are obvious: Hey, we are the people who have invented television, i-pads, radar and remote controlled drones to eliminate our enemies. Its obvious we know what were talking about! The word adequately used to describe such attitudes is arrogance. And the one to describe that kind of behavior, hypocrisy. Keep God out of science, but use Him for us to get to use our scientific toys on the lab rats in the Mideast! God may not have created the universe, but He sure made America the ruler of the world seems to be the consensus of enlightenment cooked up at 58 East 68th Street, New York, along with their hoards of employed think tanks, and preached with evangelistic fervor by their likewise employed media. If God didnt exist, the warmongers in Gloryland would yet have to invent Him. Lets hope for them that their Creator wont get terribly teed off with their act, and their glory should come falling flat on its face any day soon, reducing their physical stature to their present spiritual one. Or should we not?