You Can't Kill Wickedness With A Bullet

 Perhaps this should have been entitled, "you can't kill wickedness with a bullet ALONE." ;) My random bible passage on this Sabbath was from Joshua, where the Israelites kick everyone's ass in Canaan and they finally have peace. So, clearly, war was necessary if they were going to inherit the land as G-d had promised. But the Israelites were, for the moment, a united people led by G-d when this happened.

No doubt fighting is sometimes useful and necessary, but if you don't uproot the causes of having to go to that unpleasant extreme you have achieved little. Imagine if in WWII America had a significant minority of Nazis. Well, beating the Nazis in Germany would amount to little if we had a growing cancer in our own country. Beating Germany wouldn't finish the fight in that case.

And we DO have a cancer in this country. The cancer of godlessness and secularism and the deification of the State. And we may have to fight that one day, too.

But at present, for the moment, this is a time for spiritual warfare. Both within ourselves and outside ourselves. The wheat is being separated from the chaff at this moment. Be prepared, rededicate yourselves. Be very careful that you are not parted with the chaff at this critical moment.

There is a movement in this State of Texas for a referendum on secession. I don't oppose that, I probably would vote in favor of it, but what do people really think that is going to accomplish even if Texas is able to secede? Texas is home to two moderately-sized cities and three giant cities. The same forces that made New York and Los Angeles wicked cities, will make Dallas and Houston and San Antonio and El Paso the same over time. Austin is already a mini- Los Angeles in terms of its moral decay. Just as the battle against evil will not be solved with bullets alone, it won't be solved with ballots alone either. Texas, left to its own devices, will inevitably shift in the same direction as California.

And you hear more radical conservatives all the time say, it may come to a little 1776 style revolutionary war to restore America. Unless people are spiritually prepared, such an attitude will inevitably lead to destruction. What are we restoring America TO? Status Quo Ante say 1950? Or 1800 (in some ways that would be more appropriate in terms of upholding State's rights - they were already long eroded by 1950.)

IF WE GO BACK TO THE SAME AMERICA, WE WILL EVENTUALLY GET THE SAME RESULTS.

The seeds of 2020,  were sown in 1776.

While the generation of the Founders may indeed have been more religious than is the norm today, they liked their license and libertinism. The freedom to get down with their funky selves was highly valued by the Founders. Franklin was notorious on two continents. Jefferson banged his slaves. Washington threw wild and extravagant parties. For the most part, deeply devout they were not.

Such license will inevitably lead to moral slavery and moral decay. If the America we are defending is merely the America of "do your own thing," that America is doomed anyway.

Now I am as full of patriotism and warm feelings for America as the next guy, maybe more than most. But America is not my G-d. G-d is my G-d.

If we do not found our revolution on the teachings of the G-d of Sinai, the G-d of Abraham, we will inevitably fail. Even if we win today, it will only be to repeat the same war tomorrow. If we have to fight a war with the commies, if we make it a political war we will lose. I believe G-d will not fight alongside us.

We must fight for G-d first. Not second.

Not "Country and G-d." JUST G-D.

And if we imagine that Americans as they now are, are prepared to be holy warriors for G-d, I think we would be sorely mistaken. The average American, including the average weekend soldier, is spiritually weak. I think we'll have to see way more tribulation before a people will rise up who are prepared to be warriors in the mold of Joshua. Much as I hate to say it, the wicked will triumph for a long time before the furnace of adversity finally molds such men. America is being judged. We are going to have to endure a lot of judgement before a remnant is ready to retake this land.

The proper focus at this moment, is us and those around us. Our spiritual dedication. Our spiritual purity. The fierceness of the fire within us, not the fire of liberty but the fire of service to Almighty G-d.

G-d and Americaolatry cannot coexist. The latter must be discarded, the former embraced. Not political war, not culture war, but holy war. Holy War is an unpopular concept even among conservatives, but it is precisely what is involved. This is not merely a political disagreement we are having in America right now. This is a spiritual war.

And unless you acknowledge it and fight it as a spiritual war, get yourself right with G-d, put the focus where it belongs, our tribulations will be long and terrible.

How to Insulate Yourself from an Insane Government

 I normally address more spiritual matters on this blog. Not generally practical ones. The things I am talking about in this post actually are matters with spiritual ramifications, but aimed in a more practical direction.

I want to speak of the MOST important matter first. The most important thing is that if you truly love G-d and keep His Commandments, you are in His hand and all good things which you receive are FROM His hand. I do not prepare for adversity from lack of faith, but from partnering with G-d to prepare for things that through His Spirit I know are ahead. Like how Joseph told the Pharaoh to stockpile food in the 7 good years leading up to the 7 years of famine: he did not do so from lack of faith but through faithfulness and obedience to do what G-d told him.

Now, our government and large parts of our country are just crazy. And wicked. And they are likely to be getting more so in 2021. So these are some matters to bring to your attention.

*****************

INFLATION: When the government is spending and cutting themselves big deals and paychecks without regard to any responsibility, there is a significant risk of devaluing the currency. The good news is, perhaps foolishly, the US Dollar is still the go-to currency in other countries in unsettled times, and demand for the Dollar is high. We should not think that this will go on forever, if the government continues to act recklessly.

There is no guaranteed hedge against inflation, when you are in the position of hedging against inflation you are already in a losing scenario and just trying to control your loss. Gold is very high right now, and also remember that gold is valueless in itself. You can't eat it, drink it, heal yourself with it or shoot it.

One of the best hedges against inflation is, if you think you will NEED something in the future, like within the next year, or that you want something that will be extremely useful to you, go ahead and buy it now while your money is worth something. Now I am normally the last person to advise spending sprees, but we are talking about things that you regard as either essential or nearly so, things that will save you time energy or trouble, or things that WILL do so in the future.

It is not guaranteed that inflation is going to be a huge problem, since like I said people around the world seem to be eager to buy the Dollar. So just be watchful, be thinking about it, but don't throw all your money into hedges yet.

INSANE LAWS: There is one best protection against insane laws, which is location. They can simply do more to you and have more helpers against you if you live in a city, or live under the influence of a city (in a county dominated by one or more.) We see that in New York, where the governor and mayor can issue draconian decrees that might not fly on a federal level. Yes it also helps to be in a conservative State even if you are in a city, but cities tend towards wickedness.

Also, while I normally have high respect for officers of the law and for their role in a more sane society than this one, when someone is forced to do bad things or lose their job, that is a temptation that some will succumb to. Where are the police here where I live? There's like 5 law officers for the whole county! No officer is walking the beat where I live. I live in an unincorporated area. To all intents and purposes, the only king in my land is G-d.

If you do live in the city, well, people break laws all the time. Be a skillful law-breaker like so many are for less noble purposes. ;)

Also, as in war, fixed defenses are a testament to human stupidity.

Can they close your church? Yes they can. They shouldn't be able to according to the Constitution, but that doesn't mean they can't try as they have in New York, and they may even succeed eventually.

Can they revoke your church or religious institution's tax-exempt status? Again, according to the Constitution, they shouldn't be able to. Doesn't mean they won't try. Doesn't mean they won't succeed either.

Can they force your religious school to hire godless heathens or to teach violations of your religious teachings or to shut down? According to the Constitution, no. The Constitution doesn't mean much these days. They sure can try, they are trying now, and they may succeed. And if popular opinion or the rest of the government goes against them, I wouldn't count on the Supreme Court to be the last bastion of sanity either. I fear we will discover how toothless the Supreme Court can be.

HOWEVER, can they actually keep you from believing in G-d? Nope. Can they keep you from teaching the same? Not yet anyway, and it is a lot harder for them to target a million separate people than an institution. Can they keep you from home-schooling your children? Not yet, and if I had children (and I praise G-d in this wicked day that I don't,) if they forced me to send my children to a godless secular school I would meet them at the door with a gun. Can they keep you from staying in contact with other believers and praying with them? Nope. The institutions that we depended on, these are under attack. In places, they may fall. Does anything keep us from taking the responsibility once delegated to those institutions onto ourselves and doing church, school and other such things in a decentralized way? Nope. What it does require, is that we take more responsibility onto ourselves.

TAXES: Well you know, lack of government income is not going to stop the government from doing wickedness. They'll just print more. However, higher taxes are definitely a possibility too.

There are also grievous moral implications to your tax dollars. This to me is the most important issue, not that having Washington thieves steal your money isn't important, but this is more important. They are going to use your money to fund Planned Parenthood, sick science using the tissues of murdered children, horrible weapons of war and the like. Our Government Is Wicked. Therefore it is incumbent on us to find ways to prevent them from using our stolen money to perpetrate wickedness. Not that we can perfectly prevent it, but every way we can prevent it we should.

This is the first way: they can't steal money we don't make. Now that is going to sound like a horrible plan, but think about it a second. When I buy a tomato in the store, I have to earn money for that. Those earnings are taxed. If I go out into my garden and eat a tomato, no money is earned or spent. The transaction is between me and the sky and the ground. So everything you can do that is outside the monetary system, that is something you need to don't have to earn money for. Grow a vegetable garden, go fishing for your dinner. Build something rather than buying it. Reuse something rather than buying it.

Henry David Thoreau, not a person I am normally prone to mention in this blog, he wanted to avoid paying taxes that would go to fund the Spanish-American War. Because he was a pacifist and an isolationist and stuff. Soooo.... he stopped paying taxes and they arrested him. Wrong solution.

So instead he chose voluntary poverty. They couldn't tax what he didn't make. And in a lot of ways he was really awful at it, functionally he lived off affluent friends more than off the beans he grew, but he was aiming in the right direction. Every dollar you can avoid spending is a dollar you can avoid making. Every dollar you can avoid making is a dollar they can't tax. Now I am not necessarily advising that you lower your standard of living, unless your standard of living is ridiculous, which for most Americans it kinda is. I am saying they can't tax the vegetable in your garden. They can't tax the fish in your pond. They can't tax the table that you cobbled together from scrap. If the government starts practicing real satanic stuff, it becomes an obligation to do what is possible to avoid having money fall into their hands.

My standard of living compared with most Americans is abominable. My house does not have running water as of yet, I have to go out front with a bucket. I used to have to go out to the pond. My last bath took place in an Igloo ice chest. I only recently got a decent refrigerator and stove: prior to that I was operating out of a refrigerator slightly larger than a suitcase. But I am happy and healthy, and that is what matters.

One other way to (illegally) avoid paying taxes is to operate in cash: now legally you do have to pay taxes on cash earnings just like everything else. If you don't pay taxes on that, you are breaking the law. It is just that such transactions are, shall we say, less visible. ;) 

Another way is barter: if the transaction never involves actual currency, it's not taxable. The problem with this is that people are more isolated than ever and there's not really much in the way of barter networks going on. There should be, but there's not. 

PREPARATION: As one of my favorite Youtube personalities, Patriot Nurse, says, "beans bandages and bullets." ;) I can't claim to be very well prepared in the food storage department, I just moved out here and I was limited in the things I could haul out here and the space I have. I'm going to stock up but I also have rats (or at least A rat) so I need to have enough buckets with lids to put stuff in. I am also hoping for a good harvest next year so I can start stocking up. Bandages, I am okay in that department I think. I have a couple decent first-aid kits and a jar full of normal bandages for smaller cuts. Bullets, well I hope you stocked up on bullets and firearms long before now because prices are just cray-cray now.

Preparation is also tools. Do you have a good basic set of tools for working in wood and for repairing machines? Do you know how to use them, or does someone in your family know? Do you have good food preparation and preservation tools? I may never get more than minor cuts and I may never fire a weapon in anger, but I will definitely need tools for food preparation and preservation.

*********************

I am not trying to be alarmist. I am saying that this is our reality now, and everyone who is not still asleep knows this. It will only be getting worse in 2021. The most necessary thing is to draw close to the Lord, double down on repentance and obedience, get in the Bible and stay there. If you have that, you will have everything else. You will do okay. This is not a time to be lukewarm. The lukewarm will fall by the wayside. The lukewarm will fall into the World in time of trouble. The Lord's own people will draw closer to the Lord in such a time.

The Immorality of the Vaccines

 I'll just cut straight to the chase: two of the vaccines, the Moderna vaccine and the Pfizer vaccine, used the stolen flesh of murdered children in the testing and development of the vaccine.

One, the Astra-Zeneca vaccine, uses the stolen flesh of murdered children in the actual production of the vaccine.

The Vatican, in its "infinite wisdom," has said that despite this, there are no moral objections to taking these vaccines. The pronouncements of the Pope are infallible, you know.

No, they frikking are not. 

These vaccines were built on 1. murder and 2. theft. The murder of babies no less. That's two violations of the Ten Commandments that you are giving your support to when you take the vaccine.

If there is some special case, where if someone catches Covid they will most certainly die, maybe you can make the case that saving that life outweighs these moral considerations. People can do many things to save their lives that would be impermissible otherwise. However, Covid has a 99% survival rate. Moreover, we do not know how effective the Covid vaccines are or how bad or even lethal their side effects are.

For a normal healthy person, taking the Covid vaccine is giving aid and comfort (and money) to those who murdered those children and stole their flesh. It is grossly immoral.

While the Covid vaccine may or may not keep you safe from Covid, and may or may not make you sick, I can say two things for absolute certain. One, it is immoral.

Two is that powerful forces in this country and the world, namely some in government and in corporations, want you to be afraid. Being afraid, you will be obedient and do whatever the experts tell you to do. Stay home, lose your job, go on the dole, stop the daily practice of your lives and your interaction in the life of your community. Fear and despair. This has already happened. They will ratchet up the fear even more in 2021.

We may see the powerful, through corporate employers, requiring employees to take the vaccine else lose their jobs. We may see social credit systems start to appear in the form of proof of vaccination cards. And you know, you won't just have to take vaccines this year. You'll have to take them EVERY YEAR. Covid and whatever comes after Covid, will never be over. They do not want it to be over. They want the ability to force you to shove mystery goop in your arm every single year.

For those who have not G-d, the government is their god. For those who have not G-d, fear has no limitations. If you don't have G-d in your heart, fear can make you do anything. Bow to Molech. Bow to the altar of science and murdered children. The powerful say, we are your gods.

You thought 2020 was bad. It's only just starting.

The Perils of Prosperity

 I have enjoyed, really, fairly extravagant good fortune lately. I found a good land with a house for a price I could afford, a land with a pond teeming with fish. My mother's house sold for way more than I expected. I have been super, super fortunate.

Of course luck has nothing to do with it. From G-d comes life, and all the things that come with life. One of my first acts as the new owner of this house was to remove the horseshoe that was nailed right over the front door. It seems the previous owner believed in luck: not that this worked out well for him.

I do not believe in luck. From His hand I receive all things.

However you don't have to go far in the Tanakh to hear the frequently repeated cautionary tale of what happened to the Children of Abraham when they received the blessings of G-d. It is a theme that is repeated over and over and over. Israel was obedient and feared G-d and so they received good things: then they started taking credit for their own success and became haughty and broke faith with G-d, so G-d brought them bad things. And so they repented, or at least some did. And the cycle repeated. Faithfulness is rewarded with prosperity, which tempts many to sin, which brings desolation. It happens so many times in the Tanakh.

In America, our ancestors were faithful or at least way more faithful than is the norm now. They were rewarded. So their children and grandchildren decided to do things their own way, with repercussions that we are only beginning to see. Those ancestors like all good parents prayed to G-d, "help my children." So He did. But when it comes down to grandchildren and great-grandchildren, when those offspring deny G-d, that blessing wears off after awhile. In America, the cumulative blessings of our forefathers have reached their expiration date.

But I didn't start writing this to talk about that. I am talking about my concerns. I am truly scared of this pattern happening to me, and I hope this fear keeps me safe. People badmouth fear: appropriate fear is good. Fear keeps you safe. And so I fear this pattern that happened so many many times to the Israelites could happen to me, and that's...

terrifying.

To be led out of Egypt, which I was no less than the Israelites, and then to turn your back on G-d in the Promised Land, that is terrifying and should be. *I* was lead out of Egypt, my Egypt, the City. Dallas was my Egypt. A place where I had no good work to do and though no chains bound me, I was still a prisoner. I had not come to my Promised Land and I was not doing what I was supposed to be doing.

Now I am in my promised land, and I am very concerned to triple-down on faithfulness because I know what happened. I know what happened to the Israelites. I know the pattern of unfaithfulness that has repeated over and over and over and over. The recognition of that pattern is burned into me.

Oh Lord, keep me lowly. Keep me humble. Keep me obedient. Keep me faithful. May I castigate any trace of pride in me. I have not done these things, You did them. I did not succeed, YOU succeeded in me. How could I succeed? I am nobody. I am nothing. I am nothing without You.

It is said in the Book of Daniel that Daniel prayed and humbled himself and confessed his sins three times a day. I want to take up that habit.

Prosperity is a blessing to the godly, but to the ungodly prosperity is a rope they hang themselves with.

The promise denied was an idea very familiar to the Pilgrim Fathers. It repeats FIVE times in the Book of Numbers when the Israelites were rebellious in the desert and pined for Egypt again. It says, "your carcasses shall fall in this wilderness."

Your carcasses shall fall in this wilderness.
Your carcasses shall fall in this wilderness.
Your carcasses shall fall in this wilderness.
Your carcasses shall fall in this wilderness.

The Promised Land denied is a spiritual nightmare. I want to hammer that thought, and the warnings in Isaiah and throughout the Tanakh, I want to hammer those passages into my brain and heart. Hammer hammer hammer.

I pray to G-d that such a fate shall not befall me. Be wary, when the way to the Promised Land is cleared, that you yourself do not close that door.

Say unto them, As truly as I live, saith the LORD,
as ye have spoken in mine ears, so will I do to you:

Your carcasses shall fall in this wilderness;
and all that were numbered of you,
according to your whole number,
from twenty years old and upward,
which have murmured against me,

Doubtless ye shall not come into the land,
concerning which I sware to make you dwell therein,
save Caleb the son of Jephunneh, and
Joshua the son of Nun.

But your little ones, which ye said should be a prey,
them will I bring in, and they shall know the land
which ye have despised.

But as for you,
your carcasses, they shall fall in this wilderness.

And your children shall wander in the wilderness
forty years, and bear your whoredoms,
until your carcasses be wasted in the wilderness.

~Numbers 14:28-33

I will sing for the one I love
    a song about his vineyard:
My loved one had a vineyard
    on a fertile hillside.

He dug it up and cleared it of stones
    and planted it with the choicest vines.
He built a watchtower in it
    and cut out a winepress as well.
Then he looked for a crop of good grapes,
    but it yielded only bad fruit.

“Now you dwellers in Jerusalem and people of Judah,
    judge between me and my vineyard.

What more could have been done for my vineyard
    than I have done for it?
When I looked for good grapes,
    why did it yield only bad?
 
Now I will tell you
    what I am going to do to my vineyard:
I will take away its hedge,
    and it will be destroyed;
I will break down its wall,
    and it will be trampled.

I will make it a wasteland,
    neither pruned nor cultivated,
    and briers and thorns will grow there.
I will command the clouds
    not to rain on it.”

The vineyard of the Lord Almighty
    is the nation of Israel,
and the people of Judah
    are the vines he delighted in.
And he looked for justice, but saw bloodshed;
    for righteousness, but heard cries of distress.

~Isaiah 5:1-7

Vegetarianism?

 Just so you know, I am no natural tofu-slurper. I love eating meat.

I am also no pacifist. If a human were attacking me, I would have no issue with popping a cap in their asses. If a feral hog was charging me, same thing. If a feral hog were not charging me but wrecking my food crops, I would do whatever is necessary to make him stop, up to and including killing him. If a human being were wrecking my food crops, I would probably call 911 but if that were not possible, like in a breakdown of society, I would let him no in no uncertain terms that the consequences of his continuing could be fatal to him.

And then I'd eat him. Just kidding. ;)

If an animal were an uninvited guest in my house, like a rat or a stinging insect, I would have no qualms about killing them. I am very territorial about my space and not having unwanted critters invade it.

This is also not about the truly heinous commercial production of meat. That is probably worth a post in itself, but I'm probably not going to do it. Suffice to say that commercial meat production is a Dachau for animals.

Also, probably even most vegans would eat meat if the alternative was starvation.

This is not even a question of whether meat eating is biblically permissible, which under kosher conditions it clearly is. However, commercial meat production as it now exists was not something that was anticipated for in the Torah, and it is quite possible that most meat production now would be considered inhumane.

This is a personal question: assuming that I have adequately nutritive alternatives, and assuming also that it is not industrially-produced meat (it is hunted or raised myself,) and assuming that I don't need to kill the animal to protect self, home or food supplies, should I kill animals for meat?

Indulge me in a bit of a story. I am here on the Farm, but my food production capacities at present are limited. Many days, I basically eat gruel, a grim combination of Malt-O-Meal, oatmeal, wheat germ and peanut butter. I am operating out of a refrigerator slightly larger than a suitcase. So if anyone is in need of a change of pace food-wise, it's surely me. No doubt I would benefit nutritionally too from better quality food. I would certainly enjoy to eat something tasty for a change. Most days I just force something down. That situation is unlikely to change until I get a proper refrigerator and a proper stove, which I am holding off on that until the house in Dallas gets sold. Then I can get to a decent grocery store in Sulphur Springs or Paris and stock up.

Anyway, I wanted to determine for survival purposes whether my pond had fish in it and if so, what kind. If SHTF and grocery stores and/or money becomes inaccessible, I wanted to know whether the pond was my ace in the hole or just a wet hole. So I went fishing.

After a great deal of struggle with casting (it's been a long time since I fished,) I finally placed the hook right in the middle of the pond. And immediately got a strike. And I pulled up a nice sized fish.

It was a beautiful bass. I mean, a really nice looking fish. I got a good look at it as I tried to get the hook out of his mouth. It would have made a really nice meal.

And then I let the fish go.

One reason among many why I am here in the sticks on 3 acres instead of the city is that I want to be mostly self-sufficient in food. And there are many reasons why I want that. But being self-sufficient in food for an omnivore means raising and killing animals. And I don't feel that I am okay with that. Sure, if I HAD to kill animals to eat, I would, but I don't have to. People survive on vegetarian and vegan diets all the time.

In Genesis, in the beginning, every living thing was supposedly vegetarian. Then after Noah landed the Ark, G-d told him he (and his descendants) could eat anything they wanted. Then again, in Isaiah, in the Kingdom of G-d, everything will be vegetarian again and there will be no more death.

So killing animals for food permitted = yes. It is permitted. It is also a sign of our sin. Before the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, Adam did not eat meat. In the Kingdom, no one will eat meat.

All I know is that short of true need, premeditated killing of animals for food is not something I am personally very okay with. 

The wolf will live with the lamb,
the leopard will lie down with the goat,
the calf and the lion and the yearling a together;
and a little child will lead them.
The cow will feed with the bear,
their young will lie down together,
and the lion will eat straw like the ox.
The infant will play near the cobra’s den,
and the young child will put its hand into the viper’s nest.

They will neither harm nor destroy
on all my holy mountain,
for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea.

~Isaiah 11:6-9

Look, I am sending you out as sheep among wolves.
So be as wise as serpents and as harmless as doves.

~Matthew 10:16

LOVE G-D: HATE WHAT IS EVIL

 

G-d in the Torah is absolutely unambiguous: love, revere, respect, acknowledge, NO OTHER GODS BUT HIM. 

יהוה‎ ALONE.

 

How intolerant! ;) How disrespectful of other paths! That's not at all adequately multicultural! ;)

Now you might say, as many do, "I don't like any of them. They can all get stuffed." But that's not true. Even if you are an absolute atheist, you have gods. They are just mortal perishable gods. Whatever you pay the highest respect to, whatever you owe obedience to, that is your god. Their god may be satisfying their desires, or sex, or the respect of their peers, or any of a myriad of things. They indeed have many gods, none of them good. 

The absolutism and exclusivity of G-d's claims in the Bible are an inalienable part of the entire thing. You can't just subtract that if you don't like it. If you are a Christian church or a Reform synagogue, and you let Buddhists or Hindus or, G-d forbid, Wiccans, have ceremonies or preach at your place of worship, just stop. Take the sign off your door that says "church" or "synagogue." Sell all your bibles, sell em to someone who will read them. Call yourself an "Open-Source Temple" or something, but what you don't do is you don't clutch the Bible in one hand while clutching Hinduism or Wicca or Secularism in the other.

Did you not even read the thing in your own hand?

Idiot! Vegetable!

Do you not care that you are doing the very thing that the Prophet Elijah commanded people to be killed for? Do you not care that you are doing the very thing that King Josiah slayed pagan priests on their own altars to stop?

I don't personally care if you want to practice Wicca, or Hinduism, or Buddhism, or Secularism, or anything else. Not my circus, not my monkeys. It's your loss. What I DO care about is if you are defaming the name of the Lord יהוה‎ by MIXING HIS NAME WITH THAT OF OTHER GODS. They don't belong together.

The demands of the Lord are ABSOLUTELY UNEQUIVOCALLY EXCLUSIVE.

You cannot claim to worship Him AND other gods. It says so, right there in the Bible.

Read it before you become a preacher, motherfucker.


Moreover, G-d has rules that are mostly pretty clear. We may not want them to be clear, but they actually are:

The first one is actually the whole "no other gods" thing. It's right there, the very first Commandment.

Don't make idols.
(Okay I am simplifying that one. I regard it as a ban on the representation of any sentient being, but lets keep it simple.)

Don't misrepresent G-d, as happens continually in the so-called progressive churches.

Remember the Sabbath day, don't work or make others work on the Sabbath.
Wow that one really fell by the wayside. The Sabbath is on Saturday, by the way.  

Honor your mother and father.

Don't murder. This includes murdering your sons and daughters, born or unborn.

Do not commit adultery
(There's another one that fell out of use.)

Don't steal. (This includes you, Washington D.C.)

Don't lie or falsely accuse someone
(technically the commandment is against false accusation, but certainly G-d hates lies.)

You shall not covet anything that belongs to your neighbor.

There are other laws, but these are the biggies.

SO, if you are ensconced in a Christian church or a Reform synagogue and you are preaching the compatibility of the religion of the G-d of Sinai with other beliefs, or preaching things that the Bible clearly preaches against; if you are preaching for abortion, homosexuality, sexual immorality, divorce or moral relativism...

...you are utterly completely gratuitously intentionally misrepresenting G-d.

Such a person should be stoned to death. Stoned, with extreme prejudice. However the Bible also preaches against taking the law into your own hands, so in the absence of community elders who can get together and decide, "yup, this so-called pastor or preacher needs to be stoned to death," there's not a lot that can be done along those lines.

But I swear, if I hear any more from these progressive aborting divorcing homosexualizing gender-fluidizing preachers, I'm gonna want to make a large order at the rock quarry.

Murder is EVIL
Abortion is EVIL
Pagan idolatry is EVIL
Misrepresenting G-d is EVIL
Breaking the Sabbath is EVIL
Dishonoring your parents is EVIL
Adultery is EVIL
Divorce is EVIL
Sexual immorality is EVIL
Stealing is EVIL
Lying is EVIL
Coveting what doesn't belong to you is EVIL.

Love G-d: hate what is evil.

My Story

 For the first 40 or so years of my life, I did not particularly believe in G-d and especially not in the G-d of Sinai. I believed in many things more or less loosely, sometimes Eastern religions, often atheism, often I had no idea. I did think there was a larger meaning in this life, but I didn't feel very confident what that was.

And then I had a crisis. Nobody knew about it at the time but me, but I was having it. I understood the futility of my life as I had been living it. I felt like I was in a prison in my own life, with no way out. It was a dead end, and everywhere I looked and knew where to look, the bars of the prison were shut against me. My reason could not find an exit route, out of this fate. And so if I was going to escape, I would have to reach for something beyond logic, beyond what my reason and my brain and my life experiences up to this point were telling me.

The windows of my prison could not be opened from inside my box. They could not be opened from inside my expectations and reason and worldview and even desires: they could only be opened from... outside. I had to take a leap into the unknown. My reason and expectations and worldview and desires WERE my box, WERE my prison. They were working against me, not for me. 

And then the quote from the Gospel of Matthew came to me: whoever would save his life will lose it. He who would lose his life will save it. 

I went to the Bible and it opened itself to me. I became a Christian. At some point later, I became discouraged and abandoned it for awhile, but then a near-fatal heart attack brought me back. I then began moving into a new stage.

The contradictions between the New Testament and the Old, and the inconsistent way Christians regard the Old, and indeed issues I have always had with the idea of the divinity of Jesus - that Jesus was literally G-d and all that Trinity nonsense - began to surface. I initially decided in favor of the New over the Old: the Old was an earlier and more primitive religion, the pacifism and love and forgiveness of the New Testament was the way. This was not a very satisfactory solution for me though, and so I began to dive into the Tanakh, the Old Testament, to prove to myself what it was.

And at first it was a tremendous shock and I didn't like it. This is a fierce religion: none of this forgiving trollops for adultery business. It was a fierce G-d, and a fierce depiction of the world too. A world contaminated by terrible sins. Ferocious actions G-d dictated in response to those sins. The Tanakh is a book of war. And at first, I was horrified.

There was something else too. There was a purity that my previous experience of Christianity had barely hinted at. The New Testament is fundamentally about people and their needs. That's fine, but in the Tanakh I started to see G-d as G-d, not as a solution to human need. Who G-d is, Himself.

In Page 1 of G-d encountering humanity directly after the mythological age of Genesis, G-d tells Moses at the burning bush: "ehyeh asher ehyeh." Moses asks G-d His name. How should we call You, how should we label You, what kind of god are you among the other gods? G-d does not give Moses His name. He answers: 

I AM

You will not represent Me, you will not label Me. I am not something to fit into your intellectual file cabinets. 

 You don't get to create Me in your image, I created you in My image.

And then later: you will not represent Me as any created being. You will not represent me as anything in the sky or Earth or seas. I am not that.  

And then later: Hear O Israel: the Lord our G-d, the Lord is ONE.

One. Unity. Completeness. Uniqueness. None of this Trinity horseshit. G-d was never a man. G-d never needed to turn the other cheek.

This was a breathtaking vision of the absoluteness of G-d. This, the G-d of Sinai, was G-d. The Eternal.

And suddenly all the internal conflicts and intellectual conflicts I had had as a Christian began to fade away. Because I wasn't a Christian and having to uphold that absurdity of G-d on a cross anymore. This G-d never was on any cross. This G-d crucifies, when need be.

HOLY HOLY HOLY. Holy is fierce. Holy is above us. Holy keeps separation with us when we are unclean in our actions. Holy burns. Holy is a fire. How does G-d lead the Israelites in the desert? With a tornado of fire.

Yes G-d is loving to His own. He carries them on eagles wings. He is more our Father than any human could be. But to the wicked He is a terror.

I wasn't a Christian anymore. What was I? A Jew? No, that name usually denotes Rabbinical Judaism and I was not a Rabbinical Jew. I have issues with Rabbinical Judaism that I won't go into. I was not ethnically or culturally Jewish or part of a Jewish community: I was a gentile. So what was I? What did they call gentile believers in the Book of Acts? A God-fearer.

As time went on the wickedness of society and this world became more manifest to me. My beliefs began to change. My eyes began to open. Many of the beliefs and thoughts and certainly behaviors that I once had were anathema to G-d. So now, they were anathema to me too.

The idea of having to make my way in this human system that had become so repugnant to me appalled me. I wanted a refuge, some place where I could live according to nature's laws and not have to deal with human insolence and ungodliness. Come out from among them and be separate. Touch not the unclean thing. But in order to get to that refuge, I would have to be strong: much stronger than I am. Nature is no pushover, it is not kind. I was not strong, I was weak: an old man in his sixties who spent most of his life in front of a computer. I could not do it without G-d's help.

And slowly but surely, before my own disbelieving eyes, this came to pass. I found this refuge. I am here now. G-d gave me that strength. I could now, with G-d's help, live the life I wanted to be living and should be living. 

Consider this: a man who did not believe, who rebelled against G-d most of his life. G-d takes this man, who did not acknowledge Him, and slowly leads him down the right path. He slowly opens his eyes. He carries him on eagle's wings, a man who did not acknowledge Him, and set him down finally in a goodly land. What an amazing G-d! What is beyond G-d? He seized me with talons of steel when I knew Him not. and would not let me go until I could truly praise His name. Until I would never want Him to let me go. What other god is like G-d? None! At my crisis moment, my life to me was nothing but wreckage. He took over the ruins of me, and made me anew. This is G-d!

שְׁמַע יִשְׂרָאֵל יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵינוּ יְהוָה אֶחָֽד׃
Shema Israel, Adonai eloheinu, Adonai echad.
Hear O Israel: The Lord your G-d, the Lord is One

בָּרוּךְ שֵׁם כְּבוֹד מַלְכוּתוֹ לְעוֹלָם וָעֶד
Baruch shem k'vod, malchuto l'olam va'ed
Blessed be the name of His glorious Kingdom forever.

In Defense of Traditional Gender Roles

 The only way for sure to understand the wisdom and purpose of a tradition is to break it. And then the harm is done: the harm that the tradition was intended to prevent. Traditions almost always have purposes for their existence or they would not have lasted long enough to become traditions.

Imagine a commercial airplane in flight and the whole flight crew has come down with food poisoning and is lying on the floor unconscious. The passengers see the plane losing altitude and think, "we need to shove some of this equipment overboard." Well that sounds like a swell idea until you throw out something you need.

20,000 years ago, people lived lives very different from our own although human nature itself hasn't necessarily changed much. But what you can be sure of is that for people 20,000 years ago, the first in line to defend the family, band or tribe from danger was almost always a man. The person wielding that club, axe, atlatl or spear was a Grog, not a Grogetta.

There is a totally biological reason for this: male hormones make you physically stronger. While there are some women who could kick most men's asses, on the whole men have more muscular strength than women and the reason is the little chemical molecule known as 17β-Hydroxyandrost-4-en-3-one, otherwise known as testosterone. Testosterone increases muscle mass, period. It's a biological fact.

Similarly, women had a specialized role to play and for good reason. Physically, biologically, the investment that a man has in the production of a new human life is a night of getting his rocks off. The investment that women have in bringing a new person into the world is far more extreme. Months of impaired movement, lessened ability to escape from predators, increased nutritional requirements, and bouts of nausea. Women have far more skin in the game of reproducing the human race.

Being more invested in the whole process, women are also the bearers of culture. A child's first words were probably taught by Mom, not Dad. Mother is greatly invested in the fate of the new little human, because that birth COST her a great deal. The only people to die in the cause of continuing the human species are women. Mothers do not get medals, no bards sing their praises by the fires of night, they are rarely rulers of kingdoms, but their real contribution to continuing the human race is far greater both physically and as carriers of human culture. It is very unfortunate that they have rarely gotten the credit they deserve for that, men tend to hog the glory and the fame and get all the good stories told about them. But lets face it: stories of war and adventure are usually more thrilling than tales of good mothers raising good people for the next generation.

Now, there is no ABSOLUTE reason why women for instance CANNOT be soldiers or bricklayers or construction workers, although men have biological advantages in these roles. If you are a woman and you have an undying thirst to be a lumberjack or a jackhammer operator, go to it... as LONG as you are not reproducing. The problem comes in where raising the next generation is concerned, and specifically teaching the next generation their culture. If you tell young women that being a jackhammer operator or a soldier is an EQUAL role to them as being a mother or teacher, you are just lying to them. Not just because they would be at a physical disadvantage in those roles though they would be. But because this diminishes their critically important role for the survival of the species and culture. Same goes for men: if you are a man and you just won't feel complete unless you take the job of nursemaid or teacher of young children, I am not going to tell you no and you would have no particular reason to listen to me if I did. But if you tell the next generation of men that being a nursemaid, teacher of small children or a caregiver is an EQUAL role for them as their traditional roles of protector, provider and defender, you would be doing the whole culture and the future of the human race a disservice.

IN DEFENSE OF THE FEMININE ROLE:

Modern people sometimes tend to think that biological need and cultural evolution does not apply to them. We can shoot rockets to distant planets and talk to people on the other side of the planet. We have the means to largely though not completely annihilate hunger, the heat of summer, the freezing cold of winter, and eliminate many infectious diseases which were immutable facts of life for previous generations. We don't have to have horses and grass to feed them in order to travel long distances quickly: we have machines that do the job much faster. So we think we have defeated nature, we humans.

We haven't defeated nature, and should our thin veneer of technological civilization fail us, we will be once again thrust back on our biological reality. And in that biological reality, gender roles are based on the survival, advancement and well-being of people and our success at continuing the species.

To continue the species, women must endure long periods of relative debilitation during pregnancy and they have to be protected during that time, or both the mother and father's DNA will fail to continue. Also, most social animals have the idea of fair play or equality among their members. Men have little physically invested in propagation compared to women: they have to do something to make up for their inequality in the parental role. They make up for that deficit by being the family, band or tribe's shock troops in case of danger.

Because women have much more invested in reproduction, biologically speaking, it is only natural that they would take the lead in caregiving for the family's new members. What that means is that they assume the primary roles of nurturer and teacher for their offspring. Young children, even more so than pregnant women, must be protected and looked after or they will not survive. The role of making sure the child eats, telling them what to eat, how to look after themselves, and generally the role of conveying the whole practical inventory of how to be a human being with a culture; that is the role of the woman.

Similarly, since humans are not quite the same kind of social animal as bees or ants, there needs to be people in charge of conflict resolution inside the community. The mentality of a warrior and the mentality of a peacemaker are not very compatible. If the culture tells me, "your role is a warrior, you fight, you kill people, you kill animals, you're tough, you're brutal," it crosses some mental wires for the culture to also tell me "you are a peacemaker, you spread love and reconciliation, you bind people together." This is not to say that reconciliation is totally hostile to the masculine role, but again, that T molecule gets in the way. Testosterone, in addition to building muscle mass, makes people more prone to be irritable and aggressive. While I don't know as much about estrogen and progesterone, it's reasonable to think that they assist in the inverse traits. As anyone who has tried to intervene in a dick-measuring contest between men can probably attest, men are just not as good at conflict resolution as women. It would be silly to think that this is entirely cultural bias without biological roots.

Without strong well-taught, well-tended, well-bonded families with strong codes of conduct, dysfunction results. People and cultures become sick, both mentally and physically. Crime, drug addiction, immorality, sickness and needless death ensue. The primary and often thankless responsibility for keeping that from happening belongs to the wife and mother. The feminine role in other words.

Mothers make the world go round. It is the opposite of a lowly role, though it doesn't get the credit it deserves. If your mother was a good responsible superintendent of the family and human culture, thank her today. Bards may not sing songs about her conquests, generals may pin no medals on her bosom, no one may write a tale of gripping adventure about parenting, but without motherhood our species and culture dies. 

IN DEFENSE OF THE MASCULINE ROLE:

Who do you send when the boogeyman comes? When the monster appears? Because boogeymen do come and monsters do appear, though the monsters may take more the form of other humans than cave bears and lions these days.

And what kind of person does that person need to be?

First off is fear: how do you get a human being to overcome bowel-clenching fear when presented with a ferocious cave bear or a hungry lion or a violent enemy army? Because normally, rationally, they should be shitting all over themselves when confronted with these things. Creatures generally fear death above all.

Well, you do that by developing a culture where the people responsible for that job are trained and socially reinforced to tamp down on their emotions. Where a culture of acceptance of pain and even triumphing in enduring pain is embraced. Basically you get a bunch of young men together and get them to train each other to be more macho. Crush down on emotion, at least in times of danger. Be stoic in the face of pain. BE MORE AFRAID of losing face in front of your comrades, than perhaps even of death itself.

Young boys in most cultures have games involving facing pain. I knew there were such games when I was a boy. Basically, if you can stand more pain than your fellow, you win. Face the unfaceable: embrace the unembraceable. Such is the role of a man.

Second is courage: just because you can keep control of your fear does not itself make you courageous. You could face an enemy army and while being prepared to fight and die, consider that running away would be far smarter for you personally. While courage and especially the best courage is often practiced alone, it is often built in company. Your fellow men tell you: the family, the tribe, the nation, is worth dying for. Maybe Valhalla awaits the brave warrior, a place of endless mead and tales and boasts, the ultimate Man Cave. ;) Those other people are barbarians who would destroy what we and our fathers have built; our civilization, our nation. Maybe this involves a bit of self-deception, but if so it is deception that is good for your family, tribe, nation or gene group generally. The sacrifice of you in particular is beneficial, ideally, to the whole.

Women must not be sacrificed. That's like eating your seed corn. A family, band, tribe or nation's reproductive potential is directly tied to women, not men. One (tired) male could theoretically fertilize thousands of women, but every dead woman is a percentage of reproductive potential lost. And if your family, band, tribe or nation has less people, it is less able to defend itself.

Risk-taking generally is a male gender trait. For the above reasons, it is a bad idea for women to take any unnecessary risks. Conversely, it is a good idea for the tribe, nation and species for men to take reasonable risks or even slightly unreasonable risks, because taking such risks is good for the whole even if it may turn out bad for the individual. It opens up potential new avenues for trade, for food, for wealth, for knowledge - all kinds of things. If the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria had been swallowed up by the sea, the consequences for European culture would have been fairly minimal in itself. If neither they nor anyone else took the RISK and Europeans never discovered the Americas, the consequences would be huge. Discovering the Americas was an unqualified good for Europe even if it was terrible for the peoples of the Americas. The Aztecs were an innovative people in certain respects, but innovative seafaring was not their thing. If they had been innovative seafarers, perhaps they would have visited Europe instead, but they lost out.

And this is connected to why most scientist are male, although women can certainly be scientists. Women are not dumber than men, but men are by nature and culture more probing. That's their job, culturally, to expand the frontiers, whether it means the frontier with the enemy or the frontiers of knowledge. It is inversely the job of women culturally to cultivate what the family, band, tribe or nation ALREADY has. What is already known, territory already conquered.

****

It is amazing to me that people often do not recognize the beautiful synergy of the male and female gender roles. Men should take much of the blame for that: the male role is inherently self-glorifying. Ya, ya, men are dicks, we know that. ;) But we men would be profoundly stupid if we did not appreciate the necessity of both sides of the yin-yang relationship and the glory and honor, if you will, of the traditional feminine role. Both are critical. We moderns think we have transcended nature but we have not. We think that men can be women if they want, and women men if they want, but hundreds of thousands of years of the wisdom of cultural evolution (never mind biology) says they cannot. Tradition is wise, and we must fully understand and appreciate tradition or else any thought of changing it is reckless. There are undoubtedly some foolish traditions, and those will fade in time, as evolution applies to traditions as it does all other things in the behavior of living things. And that is why tradition is important and should not be casually tossed aside: it has stood the test of time. It has survived the pressures of survival in far more adverse and dangerous times than these. Should technological civilization fall, I would be willing to bet that a hundred years later there would not be many LGBTQ+ people because such people would be handicapped in the race for survival. Traditional gender roles are favorable to the survival of the species, to the endurance and development of culture, and to the development of sane sound strong moral human beings.

Freedom AND G-d?

For many people, the idea of being a social conservative who believes in G-d and His Law, and also believing in freedom, these things seem inconsistent. And it is not totally irrational that they should think so, though some of the subtleties of those issues may be escaping them. I am not in favor of licentiousness, and to godless people belief in freedom and belief in licentiousness are kind of hard to tell apart. One man's freedom is another man's license, so they may think.

In the final analysis, we are always faced with the decision between having G-d as our King, OR, our king as our god. Or, our government or politics as our god. When G-d delivered the Hebrews from Egypt, who were they delivered from? From an absolute monarch and god-king who had the power of life and death over his subjects. And this was not a situation limited to ancient Egypt: political power always seeks more of the same. Political power always seeks to become the de-facto god, whether it declares itself such or not. Why did the Soviet Union and Communist China ban belief in G-d? Because someone who is loyal to G-d is to that extent not loyal to them.

What I am against is human tyranny. When G-d led the Hebrews away from Egypt, what was He offering as an alternative to Egypt? What He was offering was this: if you keep His law and owe obedience to Him, you don't need a human king.

Power corrupts even the best of men. Humans are sinful and flawed and egotistical and congenitally unfit to rule wisely and justly.

Of course, one day the Hebrews DID have a human king. They demanded one. Of which G-d said to Samuel:

“Listen to all that the people are saying to you;
it is not you they have rejected, but they have

rejected Me as their king."

~1 Samuel 8:7

I am not against order. I am not for license or licentious behavior of any kind. I am a law-and-order kind of guy. What I am saying is that human government is unfit to BE that order beyond a certain limited point. Human government should defend the borders and keep basic moral and social law (do not kill, do not steal, do not go around defrauding people,) facilitate and regulate basic human exchange of goods and ideas (the mail, highways, internet, the fairness and transparency of markets,) ensure equal access to justice and equal respect of basic moral rights, and that's pretty well it.

Now lets take a social conservative issue - pornography. I am against pornography in every way shape and form. It is a violation of the Commandment against adultery. So, am I in favor of it being outlawed? I would say that if the price of my freedom of religion was that other people have freedom of pornography, I could live with that.

The problem is that sooner or later a society that has freedom of pornography, won't have freedom of religion. Belief in G-d and belief in licentiousness are competing and incompatible worldviews. If we lived in a world where banning pornography was even practical, I would say that rather than going to recourse of law and force first thing (all law in the end is backed by force,) we first build consensus that pornography is bad. We educate people that it is bad. When a consensus has been built, then we could apply pressure to stopping it altogether. Right now though we are ridiculously far away from any of that, to the point where it is no longer sensible to even talk about outlawing it.

So we actually have two "freedoms" we are talking about here. One is:

"I am free to do whatever I like up to a certain point,"

and the other is

"the government is not free to use law backed by force to stop me beyond a certain point."

You are never actually free to break G-d's law without consequences. It is actually the latter, based on my absolutely certain knowledge of the folly of human power, that I am arguing in favor of.

In fact, G-d's Law, the only true law, is unavoidable. If you break it, you will pay the consequences, and no law officers are required to enforce it. If you are an otherwise good person who breaks the law, you will pay for it, even if you afterwards repent and are forgiven. If you are a murderer who manages to avoid legal consequences for your crimes, you still will pay for it anyway. Everyone always pays for everything, forgiven or not.

So to say that you believe in limited government (and hence freedom from government beyond a certain point,) and to say that you believe in license ("enjoying" forms of immorality without consequences) are very different things. I DO believe in limited government. I don't believe that the government is fit to be my god or anyone else's. I DO also believe in G-d's law and seek to follow it as best I can and I know that if I fall short in that, I will reap the consequences of disobedience whether there is any government to enforce those consequences or not.

American government and American freedom was born in the sweet spot between a largely G-d fearing populace and a government strictly limited by law. Limited by the Constitution. Without at least a significant minority of people who love and fear G-d, that experiment cannot long continue because license and moral weakness inevitably invites tyranny. In any case, my ultimate loyalties are clear:

G-d Alone Is My King.

The Problem of Evil

The classical "Problem of Evil" is, if G-d is omnipotent why does he allow evil? Or to bring it down to a concrete level, the "Problem of Suffering." Why does he allow stuff like kids with brain cancer? Surely they didn't deserve such great suffering. The problem of evil and the problem of suffering are connected, because if something causes zero suffering or harm to anything at any time, it's probably not evil. We might want to broaden our sense of what qualifies as "harm," but that's a good rough guide.

I actually don't find that question as interesting as some other related questions which I will get to in a moment. The reason why I don't find the "Problem of Evil" that problematic is, suffering is temporary and relative. Even though, it may not seem temporary and relative at the time.

Watch a 5-year-old fall and skin his knee. Unless the child in question is extraordinarily disciplined, he may well scream like harpies were tearing him limb from limb. To him, the injury truly is awful, the subjective experience of it is awful, even though the objective damage is minimal. Spending 2 years dying of cancer of the anus or something might indeed feel like eternal torture, but it actually isn't. It ends. And after it ends, nobody is experiencing it anymore so it doesn't exist. Ephemeral suffering, ephemeral evil, sucks at the time. It may suck so much that it monopolizes 100% of your attention at the time, but it isn't actually that important. Sure, we all want to minimize it everywhere we can, because it really does suck badly at the time it is happening.

Suppose they invented a form of VR headset that was whole-body, whole-senses. So for instance if you loaded a simulation of a Civil War battle, you would feel the breeze on your cheek. You would smell the decaying corpses. You would hear the bullets whiz by your head. You could talk to your compatriots and see the sweat beading up on their foreheads and the look of terror on their faces. When shot, when dying, that is exactly what you would feel. You've got a hole in your chest you could stick your thumb through, and you're dying. But you unplug from that rather traumatic VR system and look at yourself, you are whole and unharmed in an air conditioned room somewhere. No harm is done. It's awful at the time, but transitory. Just as worldly pleasures are also transitory.

The problem with saying "Good and Evil" is that it does sound a bit like you are saying "Happiness and Suffering," whereas in a Judeo-Christian context, "Good" is obedience to G-d which might in fact cause suffering. This is a fact that is little-appreciated, that doing good can hurt. While "Good" is not unconnected with well-being and "Evil" not unconnected with degeneration and suffering, you might indeed do a "Good" act that causes suffering or even death. If you see someone shooting up a shopping mall and the only way you can realistically stop them is to shoot them, that act is good even though the pain and death of the shooter is very real and terrible to him. If someone gets bit by a bat and the only way to keep them from getting rabies is a series of painful injections, giving them the injections is good even though it's agonizing.

The meta-level, the cosmological level, of the "Problem of Evil" is this: if you assume that the world is a battleground between good and evil or obedience and disobedience to be more precise, why is that the case? Why is THAT the lesson we are supposed to be learning here?

If our experience of suffering and evil is transitory anyway, why wouldn't it be a battle between, lets say, vanilla and chocolate ice cream? That would be a much more genial and flavorful battle, if we need a battle. And the usual arguments for why good and evil are significant and vanilla and chocolate are not, are worldly arguments. Because evil causes pain and good heals. Ice cream is just ice cream. But if both pain and healing are transitory, why does it matter?

When we are all dead and this world is a cold cinder in space, why is the fact that it was a battle between obedience and disobedience important? All the harm done is long dead and buried. All the healing is too. So why is THIS the lesson we are supposed to learn in the cosmic school right now?

Every animal on this planet had to evolve to be selfish. To look after its own survival and its own genes, it's blood, it's kin. It is guided by its body and its senses to do so, to please its senses. This is the need for selfishness, for tunnel-vision focused on oneself and one's own body. So if you are an animal on this planet, that's what you need to learn. I have raccoons that come up to the outside of my window to eat bugs, moths and such, attracted by the lights inside the house. That raccoon does not spare a single thought for the bug. The bug does not spare a single thought for the plant that it sucks juices from. The plant, if it could think, does not spare a single thought for the plant that is being overshadowed and starved of sun by its leaves. While plants and animals may be incapable of evil as we understand it, they can most definitely cause harm.

Humans also need to know how to be selfish in this way, how to survive. But if that is all a human being learns in the time it is here, he or she is a failed human being. To live solely in this way is evil. It is both harmful and disobedient.

Why is it that the first lessons that G-d teaches man involve self-denial and pain? Don't eat the Apple, that is self-denial. The Apple looks good to eat, juicy and delicious in fact, but you must not. Why? Because it's not yours. Because G-d commanded it, and G-d decides what is yours and not-yours.

Now there were two named trees in the Garden: the other one was the Tree of Life. Note that they did not pick that one to eat from first. Why? I can surmise: the fruit of the Tree of Life looks ugly. Looks not delicious. Smells bad. To choose that fruit would have been to embrace self-denial, to disregard the senses. They were like animals, they weren't capable. You could say that Good, or rather Obedience, is like that fruit. Appears bad to the senses sometimes, but is good.

Circumcision. Abraham must have given G-d a look like, "You want me to do what now???" To Abraham, like most men, I am sure his John Thomas was the apple of his eye.

"You Want Me To CUT it???"

And then G-d asked a worse thing. Your favorite being in the whole world, someone you would die a thousand times to protect. Your son. You must take him up on that mountain and kill him. 

If Abraham had been a normal man, with the same degree of love for his son that Abraham had, there would have been no problem. He would have just said "HELL NO ARE YOU CRAZY?" But Abraham was a special man: he was willing. Had G-d not stopped him, he would have killed his son. THAT willingness, is what G-d wanted, not the actual death of Isaac.

Now why does G-d want to teach us self-denial, resistance to the senses, sacrifice, pain? This is because our natural power of selfishness is so strong. And without overcoming it in the name of G-d's will, in the name of a higher good, we can never escape the black box of our selfishness, our inherent solipsism. We cannot be expanded to care for all persons and all things.

What does G-d want from us, ultimately? For us to be helpers, participants, in Creation. Not because He needs our help, obviously, or the universe wouldn't have been created to begin with. But G-d loves company. In Genesis, He speaks of "we" did such and such. "We" is him and the host of heaven, angels. At one and the same time you could say that He doesn't technically need us (or the angels) but in some sense we complete Him.

G-d Loves.

But we cannot be turned into such a being as would be worthy to care for all Creation if we cannot escape the narrow box of selfishness. If our minds and hearts cannot be expanded that far. THAT is why the battle between obedience and disobedience is happening and why obedience is the thing we are supposed to be learning. The battle between obedience and disobedience, good and evil, is a necessary consequence of a world in which we exist as beings whose job is to overcome ourselves.

Would you want a selfish self-centered being to have the power of an angel? I wouldn't.

Blind

Though I had eyes, I did not see
Though I had ears, they did not hear
Though I had a heart, it did not care
Though I had emotions, they were put to no good use.
Though I had a mind, it could see no purpose.
Though I breathed, and my heart did beat and my brain had waves, I did not live.

Then I saw, and heard, and felt, and cared aright; that I might LIVE aright.


I did not make me see. How can the blind from birth describe sight to you? How can those deaf from birth describe hearing to you?

No man can approach G-d in His holiness. The Lord of all Universes? How do you approach G-d? Who would ever dare?

No, HE approaches us. He reaches down from heaven and says, "You there, child of man...

...LIVE!"

Who can ever judge the beloved of the One almighty G-d? He judges himself, G-d judges him, but not the judgments of men.

And having eyes, I can see my condition
And having ears, I can hear the hard truth
And having a heart, I can weep
And having emotions, I can praise the One G-d
And having mind, I have purpose
And even when the day comes when I breathe not and my brain has no waves, yet I hope to live.

Pamphlet

I am always of two minds when it comes to any form of evangelism. These two points of view are:

1. It's futile. Talking to this people is like talking to a wall - not of brick, but of like steel-reinforced depleted uranium. Brick might crumble in time, the minds and hearts of this people will not.

2. I probably should do it anyway.

However, 1. is not really a valid reason, even though I think it is absolutely true. Service to my fellow man might compel me to evangelize even if it genuinely IS futile. But more importantly, service to G-d calls for it.

So I am putting together a pamphlet to distribute, but I won't be doing that just yet. For cost sake, I need to get a laser printer and I honestly have too much to do right now with getting ready for the move. Once I move though, I am going to print these out and distribute them. The text below preserves the original formatting but in one continuous strip of text rather than a multipage pamphlet.

*************************************************************************

WITHOUT G-D AND THE
TEN COMMANDMENTS,
AMERICA IS LOST

America has gone horribly wrong. Surely you can see
that. A new religion is being born these days, a new and
terrible and pagan religion, one without G-d.

I do not care if you are Christian, Jewish or Muslim.
All claim to worship the G-d of Sinai and all three
faiths have gone very wrong in their own ways. None
truly represent the Lord, though some of their members
may do so. I am not here to pick a fight with anyone
who claims YHWH the G-d of Sinai as their Lord.

What I am here to tell you is that if Americans do not
return to G-d and His law, the Ten Commandments, the
law of the Torah and the wisdom of the Tanakh (what
Christians call the ‘Old Testament,’) America cannot
be saved. America is facing the consequences of
violating G-d’s Laws, which are as much laws of
Nature as gravity. You do not blame gravity if you
drop a hammer on your foot. You did that. G-d’s
judgement, which is upon America, is simply the
inevitable consequence of violating His Laws.

The Ten Commandments are the most central part
of G-d’s Law, though not all of it. Still, if you
simply obey the Ten Commandments and love G-d
and respect the rights of your neighbor, you will do
well for yourself. Let us look at the Ten Commandments:

1. I am the Lord Your G-d. You shall have no other
gods besides Me.

Suppose you are a child and your father gives you a
bicycle. Should you thank the bicycle? Should you
thank some imaginary deity of bicycles? No, you
should thank your father.

And it is not for His benefit that you should thank
the Father of all things. What does G-d lack, that
He needs anything? No, it is for YOUR benefit that
you should do it. If you thank some other deity, or
blind random chance, for the fact that you live and
have good things and a beautiful world, you are lying
to yourself and robbing yourself of a relationship
with G-d. It brings meaning and purpose into your
life that you should thank the Lord of All for your
existence. Perhaps you may think, “well my
existence isn’t worth much.” You think that
because you are godless. A person with a reason
to live, who has faith and hope, can endure a lot.

2. You will not represent the Lord your G-d as
being like anything on the Earth or in the skies
or seas. Do not bow down to any such thing.

This one is a sleeper, it looks like a commandment
against graven images, which it is, but it is more
than that. In essence, we do not get to define G-d
in our own image or the image of anything else.
G-d defines us in His image. He is the painter, WE
are the painting. This is also true of any other
creature on Earth. We do not define the existence
of a rabbit, or a deer, or a microbe. G-d does.

This is why G-d’s Laws for human beings are clear,
while G-d himself is transcendental and beyond
definition. Remember the Burning Bush? Moses
asked for a name, trying to pigeonhole G-d. G-d
simply replied, I AM.

This, I AM, is deeper than any other religion is or
could ever be. I AM is the potter, YOU are the clay.

3. You will not take the name of the Lord your
G-d in vain.

This simply means, don’t misrepresent G-d. Do
not swear by G-d to something that is false. Do not
preach perverted doctrine, which every church mosque
and synagogue in America does preach. Christians
preach that a man was G-d, which violates the 2nd
Commandment. Synagogues regard the words of men
(the Talmud) as equal to the Word of G-d. Mosques
preach that a man was a prophet when he was not, and
that G-d dictated to him some other word than that word
which is contained in the Torah.

4. Remember the Sabbath Day, to keep it holy.

Do you remember when Jesus redefined the Sabbath to
be some other day than Saturday? Neither do I, because
it never happened. Post-pagan Roman and Greek
Christians said it was Sunday, or that the Lord’s Day
anyway was Sunday and the Sabbath does not matter.
Despite the TEN COMMANDMENTS clearly saying
that it does. Despite every prophet from Jeremiah to
Ezekiel saying that not keeping the Sabbath was a
great sin of their people.

The Sabbath is SATURDAY and has been for at least
3000 years. You may not understand why we are
supposed to keep it (I hope one day you will,) but
it is nevertheless a direct commandment from G-d
on Mt. Sinai that we DO keep it.

5. Honor your father and your mother.

Gosh, do I really need to explain this? I guess in this
day and age, I really do. My space in this booklet is
limited, so I won’t go much into it, but good grief
your parents expended their time and money and
energy and love and grief into you. Repay them by
honoring them.

6. Do not murder.

I suppose I need to explain this one too. That life
does not belong to you. DO NOT take it. When you
murder someone else, you are on the path to
murdering your own soul and barring a major
repentance in your life, you are doomed to Sheol
if you commit murder.

Now all killing is not murder. You can kill to defend
your innocent life (assuming you didn’t provoke
them to try to kill you,) and you can kill to protect
the innocent lives of others. Note the word
“innocent,” that means that you were not
threatening their life first.

7. Do not commit adultery.

I could have done this whole booklet on that one
commandment. First lets define what is not adultery
because that is easier. What is not adultery is having
sex with someone you are already married to.
Married meaning one woman and one man.
Everything else IS adultery. Yes, biblical figures
did often have multiple wives. G-d never said He
liked it, but it was allowed at that time.

Broken marriages and children out of wedlock and
the related sin, ABORTION,  cause grave suffering
and disruption. Human children need one father and
one mother in a committed relationship in order to
grow up mentally and socially healthy. The purpose
of sex is to have children. Raising a healthy,
good, sane and godly child to be a woman or a man
is the pinnacle of human achievement.

What do we have now? Poorly socialized and
ungodly children growing up into adults and doing
drugs alcohol crimes and sexual immorality which
leads to ABORTION, broken families, ruined lives
and suffering for the whole nation as well as
judgment from G-d upon the whole nation. 
The family is the backbone of all civilized society.

8. Do not steal.

Come on, do I have to explain this? Do you like
having your things stolen? No? Don’t do it to others.

9. Do not bear false witness.

I think the reason why G-d didn’t just say, “Do not
lie” is that humans are habitual liars and that would
have been too hard. Yes, do not lie. Lies are hateful
to G-d. But this commandment refers to swearing to
others hurt. In other words, suppose you stole 
something and blamed the theft on someone else. That
is bearing false witness. Do not lie to another’s injury.

10. Do not covet anything that belongs to your
neighbor.

What does covet mean? If I see that a neighbor has a
swell fishing rod and I would like one just like it, is
that coveting? No. Coveting means you desire to take
it from your neighbor.

Do not covet your neighbor’s house, land, belongings,
wife or husband, animals, vehicles or anything
which belongs to your neighbor.

As I sit here, there have been riots in which people
have smashed windows and stolen things. This
has happened because those people were never
taught not to covet, or if they were taught it never
sank in. I referred to a “new religion” arising, an
evil religion: well that religion is based among other
things on jealousy, envy and hate. You have X: I want
to take X from you because it makes me angry that
you have it and I do not. I hate you because you have
X. A man of G-d knows that his relationship with G-d
is the single most important thing in life, and
knowing G-d he will know that G-d is no respecter
of persons. G-d judges everyone impartially, and
expects us to treat everyone as we would like to be
treated.

******************************************

The G-d of Sinai is ONE G-d. Hear O Israel: the
Lord your G-d, the Lord is One. And you will love
the Lord your G-d with all your heart, with all your
soul, and with all your strength, and treat your
neighbor the same as yourself.

No other person was ever G-d, nor are there any
other prophets known besides the prophets who
wrote in the Tanakh, what Christians call the
Old Testament. Nor is the writing of any other
man equal to the commandments of G-d in the
Torah. There is no Trinity. Without obedience to
the only true G-d, America will be destroyed or
turned into a perverted version of itself. This
is as inevitable as gravity, as the motion of the
planets. Obey and love G-d and receive blessings,
disobey and hate G-d and receive affliction and
destruction.

This ministry accepts Christians, Jews and Muslims
equally as straying children of the One G-d.

The Cleansing Power of Destruction

Not only in the Bible, but in many mythologies, there comes a time when the only way to renew the Earth and wipe away evil is through absolute destruction. In the Bible it's the Flood, the Deluge. In Norse mythology it is Ragnarök: the complete destruction and regeneration of the world. In both cases, complete destruction is followed by rebirth. While the Torah itself says nothing about an end-times destruction, the implication of the Flood is clear. G-d promised not to destroy the Earth with WATER again. He did not promise NOT to destroy the Earth. Nor did He promise that WE wouldn't destroy the Earth. Christian eschatology would become far more explicit, practically a blow-by-blow description of the destruction of the world.

In the New Testament, the focus is on forgiveness and redemption. In the Tanakh, the Old Testament, the focus is on resistance and destruction. In the New Testament, we are told not to resist an evil person, and to turn the other cheek. In the Tanakh we are told to violently oppose and destroy evil. These are reasons, among others, why I came to the conclusion that the religion of the New Testament and the religion of the Tanakh, the Old Testament, can in no way be described as the same religion, the beliefs of Christians notwithstanding. While I once embraced the teaching of the New Testament, the peace, tolerance and forgiveness in it, G-d with a human face, I equally disliked the teaching of the Old.

I compelled myself to read the Old Testament to try to resolve these contradictions, and found that the contradictions all existed in the New Testament. Man as god. Non-resistance. Violation of commandments like dietary laws and the Sabbath. These were not renovations of the Tanakh, they were flat denials of it. The Tanakh was consistent with itself, the New Testament was not consistent with it, or even sometimes with simple logic.

And I fell in love with the Commandments and the fierce clarity of the Tanakh. The Tanakh tears you, burns you. It is supposed to hurt. What it does to you is a gentler version of what the Flood did to the world. You are purified like silver in a furnace. I grew to love this fiercely and uncompromisingly holy Lord, next to whom there are no others. Neither son nor ghost. Adonai eloheinu, adonai Echad. The Lord is One.

Getting back to the topic of destruction - Armageddon as conceived in Ragnarök or as conceived as the Christian or Jewish Last Day is actually a deeply hopeful conception. Evil can be fixed, sin can be fixed, the corruption of the Earth can be fixed. Fixed drastically, horribly, but fixed. Evil doesn't get the last word. The alternative to this is a living nightmare: an eternal twilight of ignorance and evil.

Hell on Earth.

With the riots in the streets these days, with the brazen lies of the corporations through the news media, people turning on each other, hatred, this hell on Earth seems very close to me. It is easy to wish for the cleansing fire of destruction to delete, to "cancel" this world and bring a new one into being. However, the prophet Amos warns us that things will get very very bad before anything gets better:

"Woe to you who long
for the day of the Lord!
Why do you long for the day of the Lord?
That day will be darkness, not light.
It will be as though a man fled from a lion
only to meet a bear,
as though he entered his house
and rested his hand on the wall
only to have a snake bite him.

Will not the day of the Lord be darkness, not light—
pitch-dark, without a ray of brightness?"

~Amos 5:18-20

So we can deduce two things: one, that hell on Earth WILL come. At least for a season, it will come. And two, that it HAS to come is fundamentally a failure. We failed. Humanity failed. Armageddon didn't hinge on G-d's will but our action. We've got nothing to be happy about. We should hang our heads. It's gonna be BAD.

It's not dissimilar to being optimistic about death. We are not supposed to love death but LIFE. Death is a punishment or rather a correction. If atonement comes after, if the Kingdom comes after, it doesn't make the correction less of a correction or any less terrible. For every person who makes it into the Kingdom, how many won't? For the others, death is just death. We aren't supposed to be happy about death or Armageddon either one. It is because of our failure that it comes.

However one hopeful thing is, Evil doesn't win. In the end, Evil is destroyed utterly. That is one reason why I don't believe in hell. As long as there are souls in hell, Evil still exists. Eternal hell would be a slight to G-d's ultimate victory and ultimate justice. Evil is wiped from existence, completely.

In a conversation I once had a year or two ago, I said that I was not afraid that cataclysmic destruction would come to the world. I said I was afraid that it wouldn't. Because if America is not punished, if the world is not punished, G-d is not just. This would mean that eternal twilight, eternal ignorance and evil, eternal hell on Earth would come. Absolutely, with certainty, it would come. No destruction actually means no hope.

But G-d IS, and G-d IS just.

The End

Take a wild guess how many unarmed black people were shot by cops in 2019. Just take a shot in the dark.

500?

100?

50?

No.

TEN

Of these ten, several were in the act of violently assaulting the officer in question. Ten, out of 350 MILLION PEOPLE.

Now any unnecessary death is bad, but not all these deaths were unnecessary. If someone is beating you to death, and you have a gun, you kinda have to shoot them.

NOW, how many blacks were murdered by other blacks?

I can't find statistics for 2019, but in 2015 nearly 6000 blacks were murdered by other blacks.

You won't find Black Lives Matter protesting that shit. Lying leftist scumbags.

For the sake of these statistically insignificant numbers of blacks killed by cops, we are prepared to dismantle our whole democracy. People are seriously proposing defunding police departments. Who will patrol the streets then? You guessed it: looters and thugs. Rioters are burning down buildings and police cars in the streets, and leftist politicians and media personalities are endorsing the righteousness of their violence.

This is not even remotely about oppressed black people.

What this (and the extreme examples of the coronavirus lockdown) actually is, is a left-wing coup attempt.

Now to say "left wing" is actually kind of shorthand. The people actually behind it are corporations and the very rich. Why would corporations and the very rich want what appears like a left-wing coup?

Well back in the day, when large corporations actually paid taxes, and when very rich people also paid taxes, they might have been superficially conservative. Now none of them pay shit, under Democrat OR Republican control. Their ownership in Washington was virtually complete, until Trump came along. They still mostly control Congress.

Wanna see a freakout really happen? If Trump proposes a 10% tax on sales by corporations that have more than 10 million in annual sales, expect the media and politicians to go through the fucking roof. I mean, there will be heart attacks in Washington. They may just shoot him.

The liberal actors in Hollywood, who have been egging on the riots and paying bail for vandals and probably shipping pallets of bricks to the streets, are paid by media companies who finance their movies. The mainstream media is owned by media companies, sometimes the same ones. Mainstream media that wouldn't know truthful unbiased reporting if it bit them like a rattlesnake. They are the propaganda mouthpiece for the elite few dozen corporations that functionally run the world. Congress is mostly filled with their lackeys.

So why would major corporations want socialism? They really don't. Duh. What they want is control. A de-facto totalitarian state run by a corporate oligarchy. Today they get their way more often than not, but that's not good enough. They want to get their way all the time. They want you as their slaves. And they are prepared to steamroll right over you and right over your rights and right over the American Republic to get their way. They want their man in the Oval Office, and they will fuck over the economy and burn down our cities to get what they want. Because they control Biden. Nobody but Trump controls Trump.

So they arranged, with their lackeys in States and Cities, to really crack down on the quarantine knowing that would wreck the hell out of the economy. George Floyd was just a gift, really. He handed them Riot Time on a silver platter. And so the riots and looting, to frighten the citizens and force everyone into lockstep. Violence to enforce obedience. Otherwise, you're just a racist aren't you? You believe All Cops Are Bastards, or you're just a racist. You believe that the looting is a justified and natural outbreak of rage, or else you're a racist. Follow us -

KNEEL DOWN TO US,

in echo of Kaepernick, or you are evil incarnate. You are unclean. There is no choice. No other alternative, unless you want to be the outcast scum of the earth. Unless you are a racist.

I find it interesting that to a godless lot, kneeling has become the symbol. If I did not have faith in my Lord, I would find it scary.

No, I will NEVER kneel to you. Satan.

And this is absolutely the power of Satan behind it all. Satan hates what America was supposed to be. Satan wants to be the only god here. Satan will be god and the State will be his prophet. You will bow down, you will kneel. Or we'll get you.

I live in an affluent area, and you would think that here if anywhere would be a conservative bastion. It's not. I have been speaking truth on Nextdoor to my neighbors. They have been apoplectic in their desire to bend over to the new social norm. Cops are bad, cops are racist, the system must be destroyed.

What they are truly saying is this: don't take my house, don't take my car, don't get me fired at my job, don't make me a social pariah and I'll say anything you want me to say. Cowards.

They are not worthy of America as it was intended to be. And so it will be taken away from them.

There are a few possible endgames here. One is that Trump wins 2020 anyway, that enough people see through the bullshit. At the end of 2019 I would have regarded Trump's re-election as virtually a certainty. Not now. The news media have really ramped up their lies. The pressure is on.

Economic pressure - you want the State to protect you when you can't find a job, don't you? You don't want to get fired at your job for your political incorrectness, do you?

Social pressure - you don't want everyone to think you are a racist, do you? You don't want to be a pariah on social media, do you?

Physical security pressure - your business might be next. Your house might be next to burn.

Ideological pressure - everything you see and hear says you need to follow this. Who are you, to doubt CNN?

Spiritual pressure - TaKe ThE kNeE. BoW dOwN tO sAtAn YoUr LoRd.

Aaaand... America's response to this so far as been underwhelming.  Everyone is drinking the kool-aid. They are selling their product. May G-d protect Tucker Carlson, he's the only person on a major network who is actually speaking the truth.

So, if Trump does not win, what then? Domination. They are going to push and push as hard as they can. Their true enemy is not black or white, it's traditional American conservatives. They are going to hit us with everything they can. And there are not enough of us, I don't think, to mount a successful resistance. It's possible that if they arrange a nationwide gun grab, or start demanding we all bow down to Beelzebub instead of going to church, that American conservatives are going to mount an armed resistance. The coming months and years are really going to shake out the men from the boys, and I am not sure we have enough men to keep our freedom. Who knows - may G-d grant us heroes.

So this may well be the end of America as we have known it. OR we may be laughing in January 2021 saying, well, they sucked at winning again. But right now is the pivot.

If Trump wins, then 2024 will more likely be the pivot but expect unholy hell to break out in the meantime. They may just attempt a flat-out physical violent coup.

We live in interesting times, boys and girls. ;) Now is the time for G-d's own to be separated from the chaff. If you bend the knee to Satan, if you allow fear to dominate your actions, you're done.