Qu'ran Reading 9:69

Like those before you; they were stronger than you in power and more abundant in wealth and children, so they enjoyed their portion; thus have you enjoyed your portion as those before you enjoyed their portion; and you entered into vain discourses like the vain discourses in which entered those before you. These are they whose works are null in this world and the hereafter; and these are they who are the losers.

Understanding God: wrath or love?

This is going to be quick as I want to get going to prayer meeting tonight, but I just thought of this analogy/explanation to get past a stumbling block many encounter when understanding or even believing in God.

I got the realization how I can help with this problem when I started thinking of some anti-religious and anti-God comments in an online news article. They, posted by the usual advocates of non-belief in God etc, took the familiar tack of citing every time God smited or punished someone in the Bible, or encouraged the Israelites to kill and conquer the natives of Canaan, as evidence that God is "mean" or "cruel." Hmm, I've heard this so many times and rather than the usual way of approaching the truthful explanation, here's an analogy.

Suppose you are a parent and someone asks you why you had a child. Suppose you answered them "So I could pay for them going to college." What? That's not even biologically honest, LOL. A parent had a child because 1) they had sex and a child resulted. I mean, that's the bottom line, no? Whether the child is loved or not, wanted or not, treated well or not, the "reason" every parent has a child is that they had sex with someone who was fertile. Duh!

One would never explain that one had a child by giving the questioner a snapshot of what you are doing with that child in the present moment, in this analogy, paying for a college education.

When one tries to understand God by citing difficult to understand actions that occur well along in the relationship between God and humans, one is making the same error. The only way to understand God (and even the "bad" parts of the relationship) which is to start in the beginning, which is love. You must understand God by understanding his foundation with human beings is love.

The proof is in the existence of both the angels and first humans, Adam and Eve. God did not create the angels so that he could have difficulty with them later. He created them, let them choose to serve or not, and those who chose not to serve him followed their leader, Lucifer, to the world, and to their abode hell. (Notice Lucifer spends very little time in hell, since he wanders the earth, while the others are all stuck in hell). So God created unbelievably immense numbers of angels (beyond quadrillions of them) out of love, not because he wanted to combat with the handful that refused to serve him.

Likewise Adam and Eve were created and God made known in his understandable true form to them for love and companionship. It was a fertile relationship, like the angels, where the fertility is love. God did not create humans so he could boss them around, be mean to them, or play games with them, or to have to pay for their college (!)

So whenever someone (maybe yourself) is tempted to try to understand God by starting out with listing with your own righteous indignation all the "bad" and "mean" things God did, and thus must supposedly be, and hence just a trick to make humans obey law and doesn't really exist, think of my analogy to bail you out of that error in mindset and time frames. Did a parent have a child just so he or she could pay tens of thousands of dollars to a college someday? That's what they had in mind when the baby was conceived? "Hey, I want to give $50,000 to NYU, so let's have a baby and send the baby to NYU!" Duh, no. God created angels and humans out of the fertile and mutual love that God is in his totality of existence. Listing the hardships, "payments" and "mean discipline" that God rendered later hardly begins to truly enlighten anyone to God's true nature.

I hope you have found this helpful! (Hi young friends, always thinking of you...)

Understanding God: punishment

I noticed an article by a pastor refuting the idea that God ever punishes (via weather or individual tragedy) in these modern times. You can find it by doing a Google news search on punishment, which is how I came across it. I thought about writing to the pastor but decided to write a quick column here instead.

Now, I'm going to say this with kindness, but firmly. Too often pastors who want to minister in a time of grief are so mushy that they surrender all scriptural integrity and thus ultimately lose their credibility with the believers that they are trying to help. The tone of that opinion piece, for those who don't read it on their own, is as follows. 1) He's quivering with indignation at those pastors who imply that disasters such as 9/11, Hurricane Katrina etc might be the full or partial result of God's wrath 2) He is faced with a person situation where members of his flock have suffered the loss of a small child in a tragic accident 3) The parents, grief stricken, worry if they are at fault via sinfulness or omission of faith in some way and 4) Pastor assures them that God does not punish temporally. What???

I am ALL for comforting the parents. Here is how it ought to have been done. 1) Yes, God does punish, because the scripture is full of God's own words of warning and specific follow up, and he does punish both individuals and nations 2) Thankfully his punishment is very rare because most humans suffer their own consequences of misdeeds, so God tends to punish mostly in instances of great sin and falling away of faith, such as idolatry 3) They can, however, receive great comfort from the Gospel's clear and unmistakable correction of two sinful misapprehensions of the time of Jesus, which is that the sins of fathers and mothers are visited upon the children (Jesus refutes that) and that children are not of great worth to God (Jesus most certainly refutes that).

So this pastor should have confirmed rather than minimized or denied that God has, does and will indeed punish both individuals and nations, but thankfully that is rare and it is very difficult to second guess a specific incident. He should have praised them for their self examination in this matter. He then should have comforted them most strongly by explaining that Jesus himself refuted what was a popular belief which is that calamity fell upon children due to either their own sinfulness or that of their parents, plus Jesus explained that children are the role models for those who wish to enter heaven. Thus it is extremely unlikely that God would punish parents for some imagined (or real) fault by having their little child run down by a car.

The pastor probably would have to explain the difference between God being in control and allowing bad things to happen versus God actually smiting via punishment, since people, including those in ministry, seem not to understand that, so of course the people are also confused. It is back to the obvious truth that God put into place natural laws and consequences, including the dangers due to mechanics and physics of death via injury due to mishap or lack of care or attentiveness. God is not going to step in with a miracle to overcome such an inevitability in a finite and injury/sickness prone human life. That is the difference between God "being in control/allowing" bad things to happen versus God "punishing" or "smiting."

Think of the time when the Israelites were enslaved in Egypt and God sent punishments, warned of by Moses and intending to motivate the Egyptians to let the people go. God sent punishments that on a low scale happen anyway, for the most part. For example, grasshoppers eat crops all the time, and people die of plagues, etc. When it is normal part of life, it is an example of God being in control but not punishing. However, when Moses warned the Pharaoh that he was defying God's will and then God backs up what Moses says with an eruption of pests or the sudden onslaught of plague, that is God smiting or punishing. If one always uses common sense when reading scripture one always finds illumination.

So the pastor could have explained to the parents that little children get into tragic accidents all the time and it is a constant but natural danger of life, which God is in control of but does not manipulate arbitrarily... far from it, since he allows humans to stumble into finally doing the right thing (such as automobile safety features, safe food laws, etc) all on their own taking decades or even hundreds of years to do so. Like the natural hardships in Egypt, their child's accident is a consequence of a routine risk of being alive. God intervenes with punishment, as the scripture demonstrates, only when the people and their religious leaders as a whole fall away from him, especially those who engage in idolatry.

The parents may be grieving but they are thinkers. They will read the Bible and wonder why any pastor denies that God does punish somewhere and somehow since the Bible is filled with examples. The pastor's job is not to strip God part of his job description, but to explain how to wisely discern and be comforted through the Gospel, the word of the Lord Jesus Christ, who addressed exactly those questions during his time (see where the disciples ask Jesus about deaths in a recent rebellion, plus deaths in an accident involving a collapsed tower, where they asked him who was the sinners that caused these current news tragedies, and Jesus explains that it does not work like that in God's eyes.)

I hope you have found this helpful, especially if you are in a helping profession where such questions are encountered on just about a daily basis.

.... I just decided to add one more thought, as I'm trying to pretend this is a conversation and anticipate questions. What if I was asked, "OK, suppose these parents were idolators? Does this mean that God kind of sent that car to run over the child as punishment?"

My answer is that no, it's not such a direct action, since God never causes evil to happen. What it means is that if the child's death is at all connected to the parents' idolatry, this is how it would occur, in one of two ways. The first is that their idolatry distracted them from routine precautions and responsibilities. I'll make an extreme example just because it's simple to get. Suppose those parents thought that nothing bad would ever happen to their child whenever the Moon is in the sign of Leo (which occurs for a few days every month). So on those couple of days the parents are very lax in their dilligence of their child's safety, thinking that due to the idolatrous teachings of their cult that their child is "protected" due to idolatrous and bogus powers. Thus God does not have to "send the car" to hit the child since the parents' own false beliefs prompted through natural law of cause and effect a dangerous situation with no precautions. So it is a punishment of their own making for putting their faith in false idols instead of in God and in the truth of the world as it really is, which is that children must always be watched and protected, where at all possible without turning yourself into a total control freak.

The second possibility is that again, suppose the parents were secret idolators. As idolators that means they have no faith in the true God, or that they are lukewarm believers who diminish God's authority in their personal lives by sharing it with bogus idolatrous beliefs. In this case God has a option to perform a miracle and save their child by having an angel tap the shoulder of the driver, or push the child out of the way, etc. but God will usually withhold a miracle if, I mean, duh, people are diminishing his authority through disbelief and idolatry. Thus, again, God does not send the car to hit the poor child and instead, God's heart breaks for the child, but he does not intervene with a miracle if that miracle is going to be attributed to glorify idolatry and occult beliefs. Again, that is punishment that is a natural outcome of the people's own actions, in this theoretical scenario...

Understanding God: timing of his wrath

This is going to be a short post that should hopefully provide lots of thought. I can't really believe that I have to explain this, but here goes. The motivation for this topic is the gradual uncovering of the many occult beliefs that have permeated society, culminating with so called Satanic worshippers and horror rap, etc., such as that Sam guy who is accused of murdering four people. He poses with religious icons and graves to degrade them, etc. This has shocked some people who are "in the know" enough to at least admit the widespread problem in the comment sections of news articles, etc. So I'm going to now "spell it out for you" whether God is tolerating this evil or not, and help you to understand his timing.

First of all, you must understand something right up front. No one "gets away" with evil and living lives full of sin. No one. Why? Because God's "batting average" is one hundred percent to send them to hell for all eternity when they die. It really is as simple as that.

Somehow these past two generations have decided that if God does not zorch on the spot someone who sins or "disrespects him and his" that God either doesn't exist or does not mind, or is powerless. That is so lame, stupid and wrong that it would be laughable if it wasn't so serious for the millions and millions (imagine a very big number) of evil people AND chronic sinners who now occupy hell. They all thought they "got away with it" until they died and woke up in hell, thrust there by God's avenging angels. No, they do not get to "argue their case" in front of God: they wake up in hell, forever (Luke 16).

That's why I mentioned my combination of boredom and dismay several years ago when kids made Internet vids kind of daring the Holy Spirit and God by stating their disbelief and blasphemy. They should have stated their youthful stupidity instead. The Bible and the Qur'an make perfectly clear that humans lead lives filled with their own crap and own free will, and then when they die, rather than be "free and clear" and "getting away with it," they awake in hell with no dialogue, no appeal to God, no nothing but "There you Are!"

The second point is that the Bible and the Qur'an make clear that God does indeed smite when he chooses to do so, either in temporal (while alive) punishment of some sort or in actually striking down a person or even a country. God usually does so by "raising up an enemy" against the sinners, rather than actually striking the blow out of the blue, miraculously. Why? For the mercy, duh. He, who is ALL Knowing, intervenes when certain points that only he knows are reached in his patience. You can trust that since he knows all that will ever happen, he smites when there is a maximum chance of those who observe and likewise sin to come to their senses, while at the same time doing minimum "loss of patience" intervention.

For a reminder of that read the section of Genesis, recently blogged about here, where Abram (Abraham) negotiates with God (who appears as an angel) about how few good people who might exist in Sodom and Gomorrah would be enough for God not to strike down the entire city. This will help you to understand that God knows all the "numbers" in advance, obviously, yet he allows even one human being to try to speak up for the rest and change the free will that humans exercise. So when God hardens his heart and lets someone evil or sinful fall on their own sword, or, as he will do, directly smite them, you can trust that it is because he knows the best time to do this so that 1) those around the persons will get the point and maybe, just maybe, actually repent and convert and 2) future evil that the persons he smited will either perform willfully or enable is minimized. Sometimes God pulls the plug for just that reason. Think of King Solomon, much loved by God, who lived to an old age, but could have lived a lot longer if he had not started to worship idols brought in by his many wives and concubines. God curtailed his life rather than 1) allow him to throw away all his grace and mercy and risk hell and 2) so that he not continue for more years to lead many souls of his people into idolatry.

Only God can do that, as I have repeatedly reminded and warned people. No human can "decide" in kind of "star chambers" who is "good" and who is "not" and thus who should be "contained" or "harmed" for the greater good. Nazis thought that and believe me, they obviously 1) did a lot of damage and 2) there is a lot of screaming done in German in hell. The analogy I've been using is that if people who think they "know who is good" and believe they can "defend" "people" from "evil forces," would have been the first to kill Saul (who persecuted Christians, them doing so in "self defense" you know) before the resurrected Christ converted Saul to, yes, St. Paul. It is absolutely forbidden in the Bible to have even evil and judging thoughts about another person, say nothing of taking God's place in judgment and thus gravely sinning, even to murder. Seen a lot of that recently.

Regardless if someone evil or a completely incorrigible sinner or enabler of sin seems to live out his or her life and is does "OK," believe the Bible and the Qur'an, and the testimony of Jesus himself (Luke 16) that those people, to their astonishment, wake up on their death in hell, one hundred percent. There is no debate or conversation with God, St. Peter or anyone else, for those who God will send to hell for their deeds: they wake up there without any argument or advocacy.

Finally, I really hope that kids (and adults) who are punked out and who think that hell really can't be all that bad a place and that Satan will "take care of them there," wise up and grow up. The Qur'an is helpful in letting you know that God ups the punishment in hell to the totally unbearable for all eternity, not Satan. Satan despises the people he fools and torments them even worse.

Why and how do we know that? Because the more Satan leads astray the sooner the End of Times and the full wrath of God will descend, and when the earth is destroyed Satan is stuck without his main home and now has to spend all of his time in hell. Duh! In the Bible you read how Satan roams the earth. Do you think he wants to be in hell? DUH! If he thought the people he fools (allegedly, since most people are wicked all on their own) are such awesome company and he could turn the thermostat so that it is cooler, why would he spend all his time on earth and dread being chained into hell with the losers?

If you actually read the Bible and/or the Qur'an, it is amazingly helpful.

Remember, no one "gets away" with evil or unrepentant continual sin and enabling: it is one hundred percent to hell for all eternity, regardless of the lack of obvious smiting any individual (or country) may experience up until that day of personal death.

Sleep well!

Understanding God, in His own words

Zacharia 8:14-17

Thus says the Lord of hosts: As I determined to harm you when your fathers provoked me to wrath, says the Lord of hosts, and I did not relent, so again in these days I have determined to favor Jerusalem and the house of Juda; do not fear!

These are the things you should do: Speak the truth to one another; let there be honesty and peace in the judgments at your gates, and let none of you plot evil against another in his heart, nor love a false oath. For all these things I hate, says the Lord.

Commentary:

First, especially for you young people (greetings again), let me explain to you that we know exactly the year when God spoke these words to the prophet Zacharia. This happened in 518 BC. We know this because Zacharia documented during what year of the reign of an actual king that we all know about through archaeology that he received this part of a particular group of messages directly from God. So you can think about how 2527 years ago God spoke these (and other) actual words to Zacharia!

I continue to point these facts out wherever I can so that you can continue to tell the difference between cultural myths and sets of beliefs that do not have cross reference to actual geology and history that we can verify, compared to the Bible and the Qur'an where actual words and deeds are spoken and conducted and written down by real people who really lived and who were witness to actual secular historical events in real places, in addition to being witnesses to the faith history (relationship with God). So Zacharia would have heard these words directly from God just over five hundred years before the birth of Jesus Christ and, as we see from the arithmetic, 2527 years ago from today in this year of 2009 AD.

I selected this passage to make commentary regarding because I happened to open up to it as I was waiting for Sunday School to begin at the non-Catholic church I attend (in order to be cross pollinating between my Catholic faith and other faiths). Even if I am the only person to do so (and I hope that I am not the only one), I am determined to at least set the example of demonstrating that one can (and should) hold one's own faith, but respect and even delight in other denominations as they worship the same God. So I'm the resident guest Catholic LOL.

I thought this would be a helpful passage to look at for several reasons. It provides, using His own words, insight into God's will and his "viewpoint," for lack of a better word. People always say they want to better understand God. Do they? If so, they need only read (flinching where necessary) what God actually says. Here's some commentary and help in understanding God in this particular passage. The context is that God is dictating to Zacharia what he should tell the Israelites, the Jewish people, during their time of trouble. (They got in trouble with God quite a bit, being like all humans, easily tempted astray, and then reaping the consequences of their bad decisions and loss of faith in God).

1. First, God confirms and reminds his people that, yes, historically their fathers (ancestors) had provoked God, and as a consequence he was wrathful with them.

Now, is wrath the same as anger? Not really, though the words are used interchangeably in some places. However, God helps the reader to recall the definition of wrath when he reminds them that he is much provoked before becoming wrathful. Wrath is justifiable anger. Human anger may be justifiable, or it may be for no good reason at all. We all know people who are appropriately anger (what is traditionally called "righteous anger") and others who are filled with anger at themselves, at others, and the world, for no good reason. God is never angry without a perfect reason. Not just a "good reason," but a perfect reason. That's why it is often called wrath, because people bring the angry consequences of their actions down upon themselves from God.

Now, why do I say that God always has not only "good reason" but "perfect reason" to be wrathful? You need two pieces of knowledge to understand why. The first is that you must know, as we've discussed before, that God is all knowing. He knows not only all that was, all that is going on "now," and also all that will be in the future, but he also knows all the, to use the fantasy term, "alternate futures" that would happen if things go "differently." So God knows what people will do if he is wrathful on a particular occasion compared to what will happen in the future if he is not wrathful. So the second piece of knowledge you need is to have faith and trust God. God never decides to do something that makes the future worse. This is a very hard thing for short-lived human beings to understand. God knows that, which is why he is never mysterious about why he is wrathful on any given occasion. He doesn't want people to wonder why God's mad at them. God wants them to know why and better yet, he wants them to stop doing what is making him so mad. That is because God knows that a worse outcome, a far worse series of consequences, will result from human beings' bad behavior and sinfulness. You must have understanding and faith that when God is wrathful, he is nipping in the bud something far worse that will happen if humans continue unchecked in that course of action.

2. So here you can see God explain that in the past he has been wrathful when provoked, but on this occasion he "has determined to favor" (not be wrathful), despite the provocations! Now, when God "decides" or "determines" something, it's not like he had to sit around and think about it. He's just putting it in human terms so that you all can understand him better. He is letting you know that he had two options (to take wrathful action or not) and which he will be doing. As I've explained, God knows all, absolutely everything that ever was, and he knows in advance all that will be and all that could have been. God knows all of the future, including, of course, what he will do in response to human actions. He basically just "waits" for humans who, through their free will and their existence in the universe where there is sequential real time that ticks away, to reach a point where God is predetermined to take action, or not. God lives beyond time but interfaces with humans in a time based context. Thus God is explaining that even though the bad behavior of his faithful people merits wrathful response, he is not going to respond on this occasion with wrath!

3. Now, having said that, God immediately lets the people, through Zacharia, know that it does not mean that what people are doing is "OK" or is "forgiven." God decides not to be wrathful, but that does not mean that God is giving permission for the behavior to continue; far from it! He then lists the things that are really making him wrathful.

4. God says to "Speak the truth to one another." That means the people, his faithful and supposedly believing pious people, are NOT speaking the truth to one another. In other words, the people are filled with day to day lies and, at the very least, omission of truth.

5. God says to "Let there be honesty and peace in the judgments at your gates." What does God mean? First, understand that the word "judgment" in Biblical times does not mean courtroom type of legal judging, but it is a word that means any sort of action or decision making. So the fact that God says that there must now be honesty and peace in the judgments means that there is now a lack of honesty and a lack of peace in the actions and decision makings by the people. That is quite a mess. Why does God say "at your gates?" He means these are civil and commercial and personal failings, since gates represent the day to day secular coming and going of people and their matters. God is making clear that the lying and the lack of honesty and peace is not taking place in the temple or the synagogues, but in the public and private squares, among and between people in their day to day activities. (I'm not saying bad things were not happening there too, but I'm just explaining the four problems that God is listing here that of themselves would merit his wrath had he determined to do so).

6. God says "And let none of you plot evil against another in his heart." Notice that God is condemning only fulfilled evil actions; he is condemning the very seeds of thinking of evil actions and mean spirited thoughts and emotional impulses! God sees into all human beings continually, and he is stating that there are many who have evil notions, ideas, emotions and thoughts directed at fellow human beings. I have continually highlighted to you in previous blog postings that scripture teaches that thoughts and wishes that are evil and unjust are individual sins, whether one then follows up on the thought or wish with a deed against another person or not!

7. God says "Nor love a false oath." What does that mean? God is saying that apparently people are not just making false oaths (which means either telling lies or making promises based on false pretenses), but worse, people are admiring those who are making false oaths! So you have people who are making false oaths surrounded by even more people who admire them for doing so. This is why God is saying not to "love a false oath," since he means, to put it in modern terminology, that people are admiring and emulating the ones who are actually committing those sins.

8. God says, "For all these things I hate." The scripture repeatedly, and Jesus demonstrated in the flesh, that God hates sin. God does not say he hates those people; he hates "all these things," which are the sins. The problem is that when certain people (and sadly there are many like that in each generation) become covered with sin and invest their lives in it, the hatred of sin that God has will inevitably fall with wrath upon the person, who had had ample chance to repent and convert their life but has not. God is stating here that these are things that he hates. It is stark warning that he hates things that too many people, then and now, think are "white lies" or "small sins" or "the cost of doing business." They think God hates just the "big sins" of murder, idolatry and so forth. This is a stark reminder, as God makes here an "intervention," that he hates what too many people take for granted then and today.

I hope that this has been enlightening and helping you to understand that God does wish to be understood, to tell humans what they must do for their own well being (as God sees the future and knows the consequences of bad behavior that humans will pull down upon their own heads as the results of their own free choice of actions), and that God gives very fair and clear warning when wrath and smiting by God is likely to occur, and that it is only his mercy, not merit, that spares people to give them another chance at repentance and correction.

Understanding God view of "the past" and mercy

Human beings are limited, due to their human frame of reference, in their ability to understand God. This little blog posting will not be a scripture citing exercise, but rather, one to help people understand a few things about God that I know puzzles them.

People, being human, tend to obsess about the past and the future, and have difficulty remaining in "the present," which is current time. Almost without realizing it, people thus make the same error when they think about God. They tend to think that God gives greater weight to the past and to the future than he does the present, but this is totally untrue. If one were to characterize where God "pays the most attention" or "puts the highest priority," one would have to say that God is the most focused on what humans are doing in the here and now, and neither the past nor the future.

The error in logic regarding God is easy to understand in its origin. Humans reason using this kind of logic: God judges humans based on sins they have committed and what they have "done in the past" and God alone knows what will happen in the future, so he must obviously be constantly "looking ahead." Thus many people think that God is like them, looking constantly back at "mistakes" and injustices while at the same time just "waiting" for the "next thing" to happen.

Thorough and open minded reading of either the Bible or the Qur'an, however, demonstrate that those views are not only false and misleading, they are actually the opposite of the truth. If one were to characterize what God "focuses on" it can only be described as the present.

When you understand that God is neither "living in the past" nor constantly "looking toward the future," one better understands an apparent, but false, contradiction, which is how can God be all merciful, while at the same time sternly judging what one has done in the past?

Ah, now do you see? God is all knowing, so of course when one dies, one is judged by God on the totality of what one has done in his or her life. Simply having all knowledge of one's past actions, however, is not the same as being focused on the past. God is not looking down from heaven fuming about what one has done in the past. Rather, God is fuming at the present, that one has not changed their ways in the here and now.

This is why sincere repentance and conversion, even at the end of a sinful and dreadfully lived life, is acceptable to God, assuming one has not continued sinning while cynically figuring that one can "confess at the last minute" and obtain forgiveness from God. Someone who genuinely has the "light bulb" moment of conversion and repentance will receive mercy from God. Someone who keeps on sinning but figures that he or she can sin for x or y amount of time and then "convert" will not receive that mercy because the conversion is cynical and insincere and of course God knows one's every thought and intention in one's heart and mind.

But because God does not obsess, as humans do, about the past, this is why God can both be perfect in his final judgment of each person (since God knows their every thought and deed from their entire past) yet still be a potentially infinite fount of mercy, since is it conversion, repentence, and reunion in his good graces that God constantly seeks with each human, regardless how wretched their past.

It is this tender concern for every human being that also is the reason that God must be understood as not just sitting around waiting for the "future" to happen. God cares about what each and every person is doing NOW, both in his or her relationship with God and in how each human is living their life with their fellow human beings. God, through the Holy Spirit, is constantly calling upon people to become "right" with God in the here and now AND to have righteous lives, and hopefully fulfilled ones, in the real world in the here and now.

For example, God is not looking at a person who is sinning, for example, and just shrugging dismissively and thinking, well, in so and so many years that person is going to get what is coming to them. No, that is not how God interacts with or prioritizes his relationship and viewpoint with each person at all.

Think about this carefully. You might think that since God knows everything, and knows every future thought and deed of each person in advance, that God is basically in a "wait" mode. That is not true. Why? Sure, God knows what will happen... and what happens is the result of God applying constant pressure in the here and now on each and every person to repent and convert sincerely. In other words, if God did not focus on the here and now with each person, no matter how wretched the person, and if God did not apply as much pressure through the Holy Spirit as he does, on each and every person, the future that God foresees would obviously be a different future than the one that is in his perfect plan.

Here's an example. Suppose you are going to drive your car a long distance, and that you are a rather forgetful person about stopping at the gas (petrol) stations along the way. But fortunately you have a passenger who reminds you every one hundred miles or so to stop at the next station and top off your tank. It would not take a psychic to predict that a forgetful person traveling alone might well run out of gas along the way, and thus not arrive as planned at one's destination, while the forgetful person traveling with the nudging friend will most likely arrive at the destination as planned.

God is like the nudging friend. Thus God's perfect knowledge of the future, and how one arrives at it, and is judged, is based on knowing how each person will or will not react to the constant nudging of the Holy Spirit.

God is constantly focused on his relationship with each person in the here and now, and, through the Holy Spirit, nudges, without destroying each human's free will, that person to do the right thing in the moment, and to live a coordinated and realistic life of righteousness and goodness.

Thus, the future that God is in control of, and knows to a detail that no human can imagine, is based on God's constant "nudging" through the Holy Spirit of each person in the "here and now." God is not "waiting" for the future: the future arrives as it does because it is the result of how responsive each human is to God's constant attention and invitation to participate in grace, goodness and righteousness based on a realistic and reality based relationship with him in the here and now.

So think about this. The world is in pretty bad shape, and there's no sugar coating how estranged many have become from not only God but also day to day goodness, righteousness, and even sanity. Think about how much worse the world would be (if it even still existed at all) if God did not, still, constantly send the Holy Spirit, ceaselessly, to each and every person, attempting to nudge them into the best grace that they can be? Sin and ignorance are tremendously powerful lures that humans promote among each other. Most people would fall into the chaos of sin and ignorance if God did not constantly "nudge" each and every person through the Holy Spirit.

Look at the forgetful driver analogy again just for a moment. How easy it is if one has an amiable companion who reminds you to top up the gas tank every one hundred miles or so? Who could fail to reach their destination then, and in a most pleasant way?

Well, someone who is playing the radio or a CD so loudly that they drown out their nudging companion would be one possible fail. If one is either willfully or ignorantly playing music so loudly that one drowns out the reminders of one's passenger, then one is losing the benefit of the nudging, either on purpose or because one doesn't realize that the nudging is happening.

Someone could also have a chip on their shoulder, or other bitterness, so that when the nudging passenger reminds the driver to stop for gas, the driver snaps at them to stop "nagging" and "mind their own business." In other words, the desire for power and control, coupled with resentment, could cause the driver to ignore the nudging that is for his or her own good.

A third example would be a driver who is so narcissistic and self absorbed that he or she does not even hear and process the words of their passenger. The passenger could be reminding them over and over that they are nearly out of gas and the driver just does not hear them because he or she is too busy thinking about themselves.

The future exists at all because God is constantly focused on the present, on the status of each person in the here and now, and exerts the Holy Spirit to reach and touch each person, striving to be heard and obeyed. It's not like the future just rolls along, arriving when it does, and God just taps his foot "waiting" for it to unfold according to his will. The future arrives minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day, week by week, month by month, year by year as a result of how each person responds to God's constant nudging, invitation and ultimately, "the offer that cannot be refused" via the Holy Spirit.

Throughout the Bible one can see that God is constantly interacting with people in the "small details" of their lives. I don't mean that God cares about one's decor. I mean that Jesus Christ, for example, converted the hearts of thousands one conversation at a time, in the "here and now" of that moment. Likewise God traveled with the Israelites, and dwelt in their midst, particularly, of course, during the time of Moses, listening, with Moses, to each person's problems and woe. This is why God had on the ark the "mercy seat," and why God appeared as the cloud within the tent that was allocated to him. God demonstrated that he is with each and every human, no matter how small their situation, and cares, deeply, throughout their lives.

Everything in the Bible is significant in the "here and now," and not as grandiose "future" prognostications. God tells and demonstrates the reality of his constant presence throughout the pages of the Bible. Think, for example, of those in the Bible who requested a child from God. Did God ever reply with a "big picture" or "the long term outlook?" No. God responded to each request with the "here and now" of the parent either receiving the hoped for pregnancy or not. God does not reply with future prognostications about the "significance" of the prayed for child in the future. Think about it.... of the twelve tribes, is there any mention of what kind of lives each patriarch lived in the Bible? Of their "significant deeds" and their "impact on the future?" Nope. Men and women prayed for children and they received them; God did not have like some laundry list of main "players" in the central casting of the future, and then check them off as each parent vied to have a child.

God constantly issues the invitation to life, and he knows how each person will respond. That is vastly different from "fate" or "destiny."

Back to our analogy before concluding this blog entry. God is constantly seeking to be heard, loved, and reconciled with, through his constant attention and focus on each human's present reality. God achieves this through the constant presence and work of the Holy Spirit among all humans, both believers and non-believers. Thus the Holy Spirit is like the nudging passenger who knows the driver is forgetful and could run out of gas and not safely reach his or her destination without constant reminding and help. Sin and ignorance (both inadvertent ignorance and willful ignorance) plus pride and ego are all human barriers to hearing or even feeling the presence of the Holy Spirit and, ultimately, God.

God does not "care about the past," no matter how dreadful and dire, wretched, evil or sinful, until one either dies and is brought into God's presence for final judgment or, in certain circumstances, when God delivers a smiting while the person still lives. Only God in his perfect knowledge knows why he smites and chastises those who he will while others seem to evade punishment for the moment. Be assured that the wise understand that a smiting can be a great gift, though it may not feel that way, if it saves one's soul by bringing one into a clarity of bowing to God and heeding his presence at last. The truly wise man or woman is glad for a smiting that results in their wake up call that ultimately saved them from hell. That, by the way, is one reason God does not smite everyone who deserves it. God knows that attentive people will understand that someone is smited and that others, through observation and reflection, can understand the message without having to receive a personal smiting.

God does not care about what a person "has done in the past" unless one continues to do those bad things in the present.

Open your heart to a reality based relationship with God in the here and now and do not allow yourselves to continue to be trapped in obsessing about the past and the future, which only God can understand.

I hope that you have found this helpful.

Understanding God: tragedies like Australia

There is a debate because a Pentecostal minister says that he dreamed some time ago that the liberality of abortion in Victoria would bring about a disaster like fire, as God withdraws his support from the people there. Others are upset and angry at such theories and remind people of the continual mercy and consolation that God provides. Both sides accurately cite scripture. So what should people think?

First of all, there is no new revelation, so those who dream that God is directly telling them something (especially of a prophetic nature) must use a great deal of discernment in understanding their dreams and intuitions. Remember that Jesus Christ himself did not know when the Second Coming would occur, for example, so God certainly will not give advance warning to anyone of anything apocalyptic or revelatory in nature: all that is going to be said on those subjects is already said in the scriptures.

Having said that the Holy Spirit works tirelessly among all people-believers and unbelievers-to attract them toward God and at the very least to do the best of moral and good things. Thus it is possible for people to have accurate premonitions. ESP is a fact and I recently wrote about it. So yes, both believers and unbelievers can have premonitions and accurate dreams of foreboding. The trouble is that people tend to dream using authority figures that they believe in, so a religious person will tend to dream of a premonition coming from a religious "authority figure," such as God, that the person believes in. A nonbeliever might have an equally valid premonition, but his or her dream may feature a person from the family, or someone from TV, or a historic figure... the assignment of revelatory seeming roles in dreams tends to be very individual and cultural. For example, Americans, obviously, rarely dream of the Queen of England, however she is a regular figure in dreams of British males, at least she was when I read of a study conducted about twenty years ago. So the Holy Spirit pushes all people to be good neighbors and to do the best that they can, and hopefully to become faithful believers in God, while at the same time, humans possess extra sensory perception, which gives various people remarkable insight in certain occasions.

Now, to the salient point. I've written before about God's wrath, sometimes called smiting, and warned that it is real and God will and does smite, but there are two things you must realize to put this in context. One is that God rarely smites directly and the scriptures indicate this quite clearly. It is only at times of egregious sin and corruption that God smites. One does have to have a little bit of pause and guilty conscience if one is honest, as these are times of great corruption, sin, immorality and turning away from and even mocking of God and desecration. So I would not, if I were you, sit back and think, "Why would God smite us? After all, we are so kind and wonderful." These are not kind and wonderful times, far from it. But no, God does not run around setting fires and doing "tit for tat" smiting.

However, the point the Pentecostal is making, that many deliberately or unconsciously miss, is that God is perfectly capable and frequently does withdraw support and blessing. So God does not smite, but he allows people to stew in their own juices of the consequences of their sin, evil, wickedness, or sins of neglect and omission. This is what is called in the Bible the "hardening of the heart." God can and does harden his heart when people have gone too far, and he also allows the hardening of human hearts to take place, particularly when they have tried and presumed repeatedly on his mercy without genuine reform and repentance.

When God withdraws support and allows the hardening of the heart to take place, very bad things can and do happen. This is because the Holy Spirit will not push as hard for goodness in the spirits of all men and women, and instead God will allow their true natures (which without God is not very nice) to have free rein. You have to understand that God, through the Holy Spirit, and through the guardian angels, does a great deal to make life bearable by constantly appealing to people to withstand the temptation of evil and neglect and to opt for the good whenever a choice is before them. Many people think that God is silent and aloof, but this is not true. Jesus reminded the disciples who would bar the children from coming to him that the guardian angels of all children constantly face God, and thus God is particularly protective of how children are treated. All children and their souls are born good, and are only pulled away from goodness through the actions of adults, their environment, and in some cases mental conditions. So God is very aware and through the Holy Spirit and the guardian angels strives to not only keep people on the righteous path of goodness, but also to help them with the difficulties of life. If God withdrew the support of the guardian angels, for example, life would be unimaginably unbearable, as it would be like a type of oxygen that you don't even know about but you need is suddenly sucked out of the atmosphere. Guardian angels and the Holy Spirit provide a very real constant "oxygen" of spiritual and bodily goodness, and they are individually attentive, whether the person believes or not.

So when God hardens his heart, and then allows others to harden their hearts, what happens? Well, look at the tsunami. God did not send the tsunami, but why is it that people did not install a simple warning system in that part of the world until after a quarter of a million people were washed away and died? People are greedy and selfish and did not care about implementing a warning system in that part of world, even though they knew full well the risk.

Why do I read that Victoria has liberal abortion laws, but for five years have not implemented an emergency fire warning system? Again, God does not send the fire, but he gets very tired of selfish and wicked human priorities, so he says, well, go ahead, set your priorities. And then there comes the fires and the warning system is sitting gathering dust on the shelf for five years, because of quarrels about who will pay for it. Money, money, money.

And people are shocked that many of the fires are suspected arson, and not lightning strikes (which can be monitored and I read that they are). Well, how long has a nihilistic and despairing, violent and yobbish mindset been a problem among humans? For decades now. No one has decency and mercy among each other, if one is to watch the "entertainment" that is offered, filled with violent nihilism, and how long will God protect humans from the consequences of each other's inhumanity? As I commented before, when I was in that region of the world, Melbourne and Healesville, where the fires are, Princess Diana was being raked over the coals as "average people" gleefully trumpeted her sexual and intimate matters in "Squidgygate." People were well on their way to being vulgar, coarse and cruel in the middle 1980's, and youth was being lost to nihilism, violence, addiction and thrill seeking.

God does not have to "smite," God simply needs to withdraw his protection and let you all do to each other the lowest inclination that humans will come up with, which is, as we see, pretty low. Are the arsonists horrified at what they did? Apparently not since some have raced out there and started even more fires.

That is what God meant in the Bible when he says he will "raise up an enemy" to smite the disobedient Israelites, for example. He withdraws his special blessing and protection and leaves a group exposed to the very evil that they have either promoted or neglected to address since they are busy being material idolaters and selfish depressives. God is like the parent of the addicted teenager who after repeated attempts to get them to obtain help, finally stands back and lets them fall, as they are so determined to do.

It is the same if one looks at Hurricane Katrina. No, God did not "send" the hurricane to punish people for their sinfulness. However, God withdrew his protection, and so people who worried about the levees breaking, evacuations not being sufficient, and so forth are ignored, and then the trouble comes, big time. To use a modern phrase, at some point God stands back and watches the human caused or exacerbated "train wreck." The cyclone in Burma is another example. There you have a secretive bunch of reincarnation believing Buddhists in charge of the country and they won't even allow aid to help the devestated impoverished victims. Natural disasters are a part of life, but without human intelligence and goodness to anticipate, plan, finance and be good neighbors, it does not matter what one's "faith" is or not: God will stop, at some point, the continual presumptions on his mercy and the lack of mercy that humans show toward each other.

That is what I see over and over. It is like humans are insisting on doing a dry run of the Apocalypse, through their own arrogance and neglect. Thus people are correct to feel that something is very wrong, and to think about the End of Days. Yet they are incorrect that these are those times because, believe me, there will be no mistaking it when it does happen. It's not something that the human puppeteers behind the scenes will manage or mitigate; when it happens it will be full out and unmistakable. Instead you have a time when humans should be so far advanced in decency, compassion, wisdom, stewardship and faith but are actually losing ground and going backwards, not forwards, in all of these areas. Thus humans are bringing on through their own actions and their own selfishness and neglect mini-tribulations and a dry run of the Apocalypse. Like the parent of the addicted teenager God wants nothing more than to be the consoler, yet what response does he get when he tries?

I hope that you have found this helpful.

Understanding God (9 of a series)

Before discussing the attribute of the infinite mercy of God, it is important to understand how God punishes. This is because humans do not seem to be able to grasp how merciful God is as long as they hold to the delusion that God punishes to be arbitrary and cruel, or to the delusion that God does not really exist as the all-knowing, and thus he does not punish at all. Whenever I discuss his mercy with humans, they always worry first to know about the punishment, hiding their own anticipation of guilt behind delusions of God's "unfairness" (too severe punishment or arbitrary) or his lack of "involvement."

A quote from the Qur'an is the most pithy in explaining the by far the most common way that God punishes. Here is the passage from the Qur'an:

Surah 22:1-2

O people! guard against (the punishment from) your Lord; surely the violence of the hour is a grievous thing.

On the day when you shall see it, every woman giving suck shall quit in confusion what she suckled, and every pregnant woman shall lay down her burden, and you shall see men intoxicated, and they shall not be intoxicated but the chastisement of Allah will be severe.

In this passage you observe two examples of God's punishment yet, how are people to interpret this, since they are examples of bad human behavior? In the first example women no longer nurse their babies and in fact, they lay down the entire burden of having children, abandoning it. And the men are not working, or protesting their women no longer caring about their children, but instead are lolling around drunk and "under the influence." So how is this punishment by God, to say nothing of being "violence" of punishment, its most severe?

It is simply this. When God seeks to punish he just steps out of the way, and grows silent, and lets humans "do what they want." The Holy Spirit stirs less and less (though never totally abandoning humans) and humans are left free to architect their own downfall. Nothing God could "think of doing" to "cause suffering" is worse than what humans come up with on their own, in their grave woundedness and hubris. And is this not exactly what we have seen in society today? Has not God let you all have "just what you wanted?" Birth control so that families are totally abandoned, abortion, pornography, sexual violence, sexual exploitation of children, violent entertainment, depressive goth and vampire "culture," use of occult tools, idolatry, alcohol and drug addiction? These are all things that have stemmed from humans deciding that they know best about being "liberated" and "sensual beings." And so millions of women have laid down and denied the joys and the responsibilities of having and caring for children, and two generations of men have been drunks and drug pushers and users. Whenever you open up a news story on any given day you can read what "joy" and "liberation" such a "free will" society has become, whether it is a child gunned down in her bed because drug gangs have a shoot out in the street, or crack or meth head parents letting their infants die of neglect, often horribly abused in addition to the lack of care. And so many women just want to be "sex in the city single" with no child and no bulges to their figure from pregnancy that there are times when I worked in Manhattan that I could go weeks without seeing a child. A generation has been skipped, and now when women (often too young) do have children, they grew up with parents who didn't have a clue how to properly and lovingly raise a child. And so you have babies born to mothers who beat them to death, or who let their boyfriends do it for them.

How can anyone not see this freak show society as punishment? I feel punished every day just watching all of you who think that you have achieved "liberation."

So when God punishes, he doesn't "zap" someone, or have a temper tantrum like humans do (for example, a Swedish rapper just drove over a California musician pedestrian, killing him, in a "crosswalk" "road rage" situation). When God has tried and tried and tried to get humans to use their free will in a healthy and loving way, and all else fails, and he must punish, he steps aside. God simply steps aside and lets all of you "do your own thing." And a woeful thing it is that you do. I love how modern atheists like to blame organized religion for everything. Gosh, yep, those bad religions, going out and making people be addicted to porn, booze, drugs, guns, forming violent street gangs, popping off children, convincing crack and meth head parents to beat them to death (maybe after first filming them being sexually abused)... yep, you sure got us there. I'm surprised that secularists and atheists "cracked the secret code" where the institutional religions are preaching all that behavior in the sermons, driving the otherwise enlightened people out to such depravity *sarcasm.* It's not a coincidence that atheists and other religion detractors have to keep quoting the same dreary "examples" (the Inquisition, Islamic extremism, etc) yet ignore that puzzlingly, the worst blights of society are the very things that the faithful, to say nothing of God, frown upon.

I can of course cite from the Bible, in addition to the Qur'an, this insight into God's prevalent form of punishment, which is to step aside and let humans do what they "really want to do," but no where is it as pithy and prescient as in this passage from the Qur'an.

I hope that you have found this helpful.

Homework assignment: So, goodness gracious, if God punishes by letting people do the wicked things they want to do, until they bring suffering onto their own heads, what does God do to bring mercy to humans? What could it possibly be? Maybe, send his Son to point the way? Maybe send the Holy Spirit to not only enlighten, but stir the guilty conscience? Maybe set some boundaries, and teach self containment, as any good parent would? You know, boundaries, those things that humans ignored and thus brought upon themselves the very things they oh so very much "wanted?" Should not be too difficult to figure out, but it's always good to discuss it together, as we will next time in this series.

Another point about praying

Truly holy people are contributing only good, even when they are not praying. They leave it all in God's hands, and thus allow God's justice to prevail.

Evil people who pretend to be "spiritual" do not retain this neutral stance. They agitate and allow evil thoughts to fester, which is a sin (yes, the Bible is clear that sinful thoughts that are harmful toward another are sins in God's eyes, who sees and knows all). Thus it is common to have people who "pray" for good causes, yet are more evil than someone who has pure and good thoughts, wishing ill toward no one else, even if they are not "praying."

The difference can be seen in the case study that I mentioned where I stopped my habit of praying daily for the planes and passengers that I saw from my previous home. Just because I stopped praying does not mean I cultivated negative thoughts. However, I know plenty of people who direct evil thoughts hoping for suffering and calamity against those they envy, or due to their warped "beliefs" (cultists who seek "vengeance" since they think they are someone special and empowered to do so). Not only do they have ugly and harmful thoughts, which they have the nerve to then bracket with prayer to God, or to Jesus, but they actually seek to put actual stumbling blocks in life in front of those that they hate or "disapprove of." No gesture is too petty, and thus, God allows them to happen, but he will have his vengeance, and that is inescapable. So even as people do evil against me, in literal deed, not just evil thoughts, I do not hope for them to be harmed and I'd never even think of using sacred prayer to pray "against" them. Rather I glorify in God's own choosing of his vengeance, his justice, his smiting. I know that will happen even if it only happens after they have lost their "fat cat" lives of plenty, and then find themselves in shock burning in hell for all eternity. I don't mind that at all, but I'm not the one from whom certain judgment comes. I'm just the handmaiden cheerleader of God's. I've had to get used to the reality that people I once cared about (and many I did not know) are now or will certainly upon their death be thrust into hell by angels who ensure that God's will is done, and who will suffer at the hands of Satan and his own for all eternity. But trust me, I'm used to it and the thought does not bother me at all, and is, rather, my last comfort. God is great and he is never deceived, and his justice is perfect, even as it may seem to be slow.

*snap* *crackle* *pop*

Think about it.

Part Six: How I tried to handle the astrologers

The last of the things I had discovered during my time observing the actions and writings of the RAP group, combined with my charism of hearing much of what is said, informed me of a really sad and destructive belief and desire of these cultists, one that is responsible for much of the trouble in the world today. That is that they have a desire to see me die.

Because some of them have extensions of normal human capabilities of an extrasensory kind, they have interpreted having foreknowledge of a person’s death as being a power that they actually possess. In other words, they think they can predict when someone will die simply because they have had those ESP forebodings that many have had throughout human history. So they’ve actually codified this erstwhile capability into a hard and fast component of their psychotic belief system and have accounted for it with sickening RAP explanations.

For example, many of the key members of the RAP group are obsessed with Poe. Lots of fey artiste types have been obsessed with Poe and his death. But the RAP group is different. They are not only obsessed with Poe’s life and death, but they 1) believe in his reincarnation and 2) obsess with the rumor that he fucked the dead body of his cousin who was his underage bride. I’m sorry I have to be so blunt, but trust me, the thoughts they have are even more blunt and worse than my adult language here in the blog.

So these people, some of whom have genuine normal ESP powers, spend a lot of their time glorifying dead depressive poets who have sex with underage girl corpses.

They then abuse drugs and alcohol to “dull the pain” of their being “doomed” to “such sad reincarnations” and have even more psychotic beliefs and imaginings.

They then draft people, like me, to play a role in their sick satanic (actually, real Satan is even disgusted with this), so I should say diabolical sadomasochistic delusions and imagine that other people have to be one of the participants. Yep, you guessed it.

I have “felt them” “try out” on me all sorts of depressive and psychotic identities, including saints, Greek pantheon members, demons, Titanic bimbo, and under age fucker or fuckee, both male and female. Not only do they try out these identities but they make these things to be self fulfilling prophecies, if not in reality then mentally. Hence I’ve been abused, physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually, but also this garbage directed at me has mentally and through the media spewed out all over the world. This is one reason why you see such enormous violent psychotic depressive depravity in the world, especially directed at our precious children. What doesn’t “stick to me” is spewed out all over the world, especially as they codify these sickening thoughts into movies, TV series, video games and porn.

I wondered, some years ago, why the Lord was smiting some people that I’d read about in the newspaper or on the Internet. Over the years, especially the past twenty years, God has been doing some smiting. His smiting especially picked up since I was assaulted in surgery in the mid 1990’s. Since I did not in day to day life know most of these people, I had no way, or interest in, questioning God’s selective smiting. I trust with my whole heart and soul and being in the will of the great and all powerful God, especially as I am the “someone” who can witness to all that he has achieved, and all that he wills. I had my own hopes and ministry, which has been permanently frozen on hold by sinful and profane humans, to focus on, so I observe how mighty God is in his wisdom, but had no curiosity or questioning as to his reasons. Like I explained, I am sanguine.

But it has without my being curious, but because I know God so well, all become terribly clear. Readers, I am sure you know why certain people have been smited, and continue to be on a daily basis. Some are big wheels, some are cogs, and some are simply greedy or deluded enablers. But they have put their minds and hearts where they should not have had, they have put their eyes and their hands where they should not have had, and they have given and taken money and wealth where they should not have had. They have robbed children of their childhood and they have robbed the innocent of their peace of mind. I am no ghoul: they are. They have defied God and spit in his face, and taken money from the widow and orphan and go on “adventure” vacations and call themselves movers and shakers and artists. And so some years ago I went from being observant of the smiting but not knowing why (nor questioning God nor trying to research the reasons, since why do that as God has it covered?) to being fully aware of why many people have been and will be smitted.

In 2003 and warned about this on the RAP message board. I decided to partake in a fake scenario that had been posed to me in order to be positively subversive and also to warn people who were the poseurs that God does and will smite those who wish evil on me and mine. One of my dearest Internet “friends” said “he” was “afraid” of one of the “female” message board posters, that she was “sending” him, I forget how he put it, but like if not cursing then something like vibes for bad things to happen to him. Hmm. Remember, I decide to take part in their chosen milieu, but I have to always be truthful. So I take on a new message board name, just for that purpose, that includes the word “angel” in it. That was a title of my authority. I then post so that all can see a warning that those who wish dire things on someone else, especially my “friend” will find that it rebounds on them. To my almost droll amusement they acted out a whole kabuki theater production over the next few months of how this “female poster” was rumored to be dead, but wasn’t. I realized over a period of time that the female poster is supposed to have been me, since they were “testing” if I had some sort of demonic or other “ill wishing” persona. That’s really when I washed my hands of the whole stupid business, although there was one other event that I used to make my break. But just to finish this point, I warned people using a truthful moniker to represent my authority that those who wish or benefit from ill being physically or psychically sent to someone will have it rebounded to them by God in his own time and way in a manner that they really won’t like. And boy oh boy, did the smitting ever pick up even more since my warning was ignored.

The breaking point with my attempts to salvage any souls on that message board came when one of the “older” “fans” who is an “aw shucks” kind of Southern female conveyed via a typo and /or poor phrasing a death wish to me on the message board. It really upset me, but not for the reasons that people thought, or for what I said in private to “friends.” It upset me because I recognized that this is an unending favorite game of the cultists to envision me dead. That kind of intrusive thought tormented my mother in the 1980’s, so I was quite familiar with the shenanigans, even though I know the cultists don’t realize that the Holy Spirit keeps me informed and thus I make the connections over the years in the confidential part of my mind. So it was pure despair that twenty years later, not only had that demented thinking directed toward me not diminished, but it was arrogantly presented to my face as typos and misspeaking. And so I quoted from Ecclesiastes and left the message board forever. And I’m sad , and pissed as all hell, to report that the death wish mentality directed toward me has not ceased and desisted. The same ploy was actually performed only two years ago in an actual Catholic Church! This is why I no longer even try to find a Mass to attend, because I just will not lead more into sin by being a tempting fat sitting target if I can help it. A woman “with an accent” sat behind me in rosary recital and made a “lisp” that was wishing basically “death” to the Virgin Mary, said into my ear. Honestly, I wanted to strike her down on the spot because of this profanity now taking place even in a church setting. Worse, one of the puppet priests actually alluded to “misspeaking due to an accent” from the pulpit a few days later. Folks, there are “believers” in hell too, and I don’t need to tell you that some of them are priests.
Well, I guess I’ve done enough blogging on this subject for today. So I’ll sit back here alone in my room, sip my Coca Cola and read some Internet news. Enjoy the smiting! Cheers!

Why God does not smite on the spot

Many people who work against the goodness of God do so because they think that if they were doing something wrong and/or if God really existed, they would be punished on the spot. Since they are not punished (and indeed many seem to live normal or even wealthy lives) they assume that God is not watching, does not exist, or they weren't sinning. This is stupid beyond belief. If you actually read the Bible (or the Qur'an) you'd know that generations of evil dictators, greedy plutocrats and sinners lived full lives on earth and their judgment comes when they die and are cast into hell. There is nowhere in the Bible or Qur'an that promises instant judgment. In fact, much of those holy books are dedicated to warning that people live one (that is 1) life and that they will be judged when they die, with hell as a real potential outcome. Jesus warned that the road to hell is very wide. So it is a total modern hedonistic fiction that if God existed and were really angry that he would smite (punish) at the time of sin. Any idiot who can read history can see that the world is not set up that way. Even Cain, who killed his brother, was protected by God from punishment by humans and allowed to live out his life.

This is because God desires that even the most wicked should some day repent and be saved. If God had to punish in earthly time on the spot each wicked deed there would be no humans on earth, only innocent animals. In the Bible you will read that several times God ponders if that would not have been the best thing to do, to leave the earth only for the animals.

However, God does intervene and punish some evil people on the spot. That is what the Bible calls "the hardening of the heart." This means that God decides to not give further chances to repent to the person. So they might fall ill and perish sooner than people expect, for example. God does not send the illness but he allows it to happen because he has turned his back on that person. So an aircraft failure or bad judgment, for example, might be fatal where it is possible that if the person had lived a good life that mistake could have been caught before it's fatal outcome... and of course you can forget miraculous healings in those cases too. God has a bias toward saving, and through the guardian angels and the Holy Spirit he is constantly pressuring people to be good and to be charitable toward each other. It's like a gentle and clean breeze that blows all the time, but most people don't notice it. The planet would be unlivable by humans without it, so you'd know if it were gone, as life would be unbearable. But most people do not notice it. When a person crosses the line with God, God is liable to harden his heart toward that person, which is to basically stop the breeze that could lead to the person repenting. That's because the person is doing so much damage that it catches up with them (like a drunk driver) or because God has come to believe the person will not repent, or will only do so on deathbed after damaging many innocent souls through their actions.

So do understand that this is why God does not "smite" on the spot, but that he does and will intervene through what the Bible explains in several places (including the words of Jesus) "the hardening of the heart."