Spirit of Truth/The Bible on Trial

Tyrants~ The abuse of power is rampant in the government of California, particularly seen in the activity of our Governor. He is a dictator that has abused his power in dramatic and calamitous ways by shutting down busiesses at random under the excuse of trying to stop the spread of Covid-19. Thousands of these small businesses are going out of business permanently, and causing havoc to the families of both the owners and the patrons that are affected. The Governor is dining out at fancy restaurants, traveling where ever he wants, and sending his children to a private school where they get face to face attention, all the while forcing the people of California to suffer under the weight of his 'orders' that prevent them from doing the same thing. He is a TYRANT, and is making California into a Socialist state where the 'elite' have the privilages, and the people have no hope of redress of grievance. Yet there are people in California that are standing up to the Governor, and will not acceed to his demands. One of these is the Sheriff of Riverside County, Chad Bianco. He is taking a stand against the Governor, and is refusing to knuckle under to his demands to arrest, cite, and fine business owners and patrons that do not adhere to the Governors demands. Sheriff Bianco is is doing this in the face of severe monetary penalties that could be levied against him and his department for not complying with the Governor. He is taking a stand. There is a tyrant in this world that is trying to dictate what and how we should believe with regards to salvation and eternal life. That Tyrant is interested in keeping the truth from believers that worship God, but don't know the God they worship. That Tyrant is Satan, who makes people believe lies as if they are truth. Stand up to this tyrant by learning the truth about salvation from the words of Jesus.

Down to the Wire~ We all have experienced the sick feeling that comes from a situation where we are in desperate need of a positive outcome that looks less and less likely to happen the closer we get to a hard deadline. Things like a bill that must be paid or a utitity will get shut off, and we don't have the money to pay it. Or a class paper needs to be be turned in tomorrow, but the computer swallowed the content and you can't find it, and you need to start over. Or you are on your way to an important event and your car breaks down on the freeway, and you discover you left your phone at home. Or worse yet, that you are bedside with a loved one, having just heard that the prognosis is certain death, and there is nothing they or anyone can do to stop the dying. All of these speak to the helplessness of life, that says that we are not in control, and have no hope of rescue, and we are coming down to the wire and are going to loose the race. In these instances you will hear people tell you to 'have faith', that God will solve the problem, fix the deficet, manage the outcome in your favor if only you believe. Well, I'm sorry to say that sometimes bad things happen, and God does not rescue you. Life Happens! Jesus had to go through a violent situation, and how He behaved shows that He understands what we are going through. Jesus was looking death square in the face, and asked God for another solution. And His Father said that if He wanted the outcome that they had planned from the beginning to happen, then He would have to suffer the death that paid the penalty for His Kingdom.  Jesus did not face this death 'by faith'. Jesus TRUSTED His Father, and understood what needed to be done, and did it. Jesus KNEW the outcome, knew what He needed to do to achieve it, and did it. We need to Trust the Plan, trust the author, trust the outcome.

Take Stock~ Even as I write this morning I am cooking down the turkey carcas (and other parts) in order to make a stock with which I will later today make a turkey soup. And since my daughter purchased the turkey I am making enough stock to share with her. The smell in the house is becoming redolent with that sweet and savory smell of turkey, with fresh onion, celery, basil, thyme, and rosemary. In thinking about what I would include in this recipe I had to 'take stock'. The other meanings of 'take stock' stems from a store owner making a count of his merchandise for ordering purposes, or a rancher counting his cattle. But the most prevailent meaing in use today is to think carefully about an event or purpose in order to form an opinion about a decision, in order to understand how a situation will affect your life. The understanding of where we are and where we want or need to be is part and parcel of being human, and is essential to our lives as we move from the temporal to the spiritual. "It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life". John 6:63. When we begin our year end assessment, as many of us are want to do, we should take into account a number of factors that will affect the ultimate outcome of our lives here on this earth, as we move toward the decisions that will affect our eternity. The most important element of this process is the process itself, the method by which we choose our course, or our recipie, for our eternity; either eternal life, or eternal death. Jesus actually gave the method to John, as seen in Revelation; "So the dragon was enraged with the woman, and went off to make war with the rest of her children, who keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus". Rev.12:17.

Turkey~ There is turkey, and then there is TURKEY! And for the first time ever in my life, yesterday I experienced a close encounter with a turkey that was so heavenly that it must be the likes of which is served for dinner in Heaven. This year for Thanksgiving my daughter Emily decised she was not going to participate in the traditional serving of a farm raised Broad Brested White turkey produced in a giant farm, that are subjected to high leves of anti-biotics simply to keep these poor animals healthly enough to live long enough to make it to market. She had watched documentary about a how these birds are horribly abused as they are placed in overcrowded conditions such that they can hardly move. The subject of this documentary was the Good Shepherd Poultry Ranch in Kansas, This is the ONE commercial farm left in the country that is protecting these Heritage breeds from extinction by conservation through food productions. Until I experienced the taste of the turkey purchased and delivered via over-night Fed Ex delivery I had no idea how a real turkey tasted, These turkeys are VERY expensive due to the cost of production, but the taste of a TRUE and hollsome turkey was simply Heavenly, and worth every penny. This same is true for Spiritual TRUTH. The truth we are being fed by the religions of the world is empty of spiritual nutrition. We believe it tastes good because we have no frame of reference with which to compare it to REAL truth. The purchase price of this NEW truth is very expensive, because to do so means you have to risk everything you now believe to be true on a new way of thinking and processing information. We have been 'raised' in an environment of overcrowded false information, and we have no 'frame of reference' with which to compare and process this new Truth. But once you have tasted it you will find it literally Heavenly.

Unexpected~ We have all at one time or another thought that a situation would turn out one way and it turns out another. When this happens it is often (sadly) that what we expected was much better than what actually happened. This is because most of us are optimistic about outcomes, rather than pessimistic. In school we would go into a test thinking we 'had it down', and when the grade comes out it is a C rather than an A. Or when our car breaks down and the mechanic say that he thinks it will be a simple fix, but it turns out that is will cost much more than we were told. But sometines it is the opposite. Yesterday, I told you the situation at our house with our electricity going down, and due to circumstances we thought we would have to use our home owners insurance in order to pay for a possible rebuild of our wiring in our house because although our electrician said he thought it would be a simple fix it turned out that he could not stay on the job long enough to find out what was the problem. (He is a fire fighter for Cal Fire and got called into work.) We then assumed the worst because we didn't know another electrician that could come over and help us. But due to good friend, and the graciousness of God, we found out that it was NOT our house wireing but a power surge due to a short in the wireing at the pole on the street. S.C.Edison was prompt in coming to fix it, and now all is well. Edison will have to pay for some minor damage due to the power surge (light fixtures and bulbs, a small radio, and frozen food spoilage). It is good to be back up and running. This is what is will be like when the world finds out that we will not have to go through the hell on earth as seen in Revelation 13, with a one-world govenment. That is because we (America and the world) chose the Life road in the 2016 adnd 2020 elections, and not the Death road that is shown in Revelation. "Joy to the World!"

Filing a Claim~ Tuesday night was the start of an adventure here at the old homestead. After three bright flashes outside of the bedroom window, our electical systme in the house went from everything working perfectly to just barely able to function. The central heat doesn't work, the lights in half the house are off. and it was COLD these last two nights. We had an electircian come over Wednesday and do an assessment, and he said that he would have to have the meter unlocked by Edison, and that could take a while. I called Edison and they said up to 5 days to get a service tech out to unlock the meter. Oh joy! But Thursday morning at 9AM the tech came by and unlocked the meter.  Nothing is simple. It could have been just a burned Neutral connection, and that would have been an easy fix. But NO!. So now we are into the process of filing a claim with our home owners insurance company to be able to get the system ficed. The gentleman that took our claim was very helpful, and I think this will go smoothly, but I stll have to find another electrician (our original electrician is a fire fighter and goes on duty today for a week) and get the assessment done, and the estimate of cost. All of this is to day that for everything there is a proceedure that must be followed in order to make a claim for anything worth fixing. Jesus established the proceedure for filing a claim against Satan for damages incurred because of sin. All of us have sinned, and Jesus paid the penalty for the Kingdom of Heaven such that anyone that files a claim for the [enalty payment for sin can enter that Kingdom and be saved. The claim has one stipulation in order to be fulfilled, and that is Obedience to the 10 Commandments, and holding to the testimony of Jesus (Rev. 12:17).  Jesus is the head of the Assurance Company that has the insurance policy for those that become righteous in fact, and enter His Kingdom.

Self-deception~ In the writing The Art of War, Sun Tzu speaks of how an enemy can be defeated using their own perception that they are stronger, better prepared, and more cunning than their enemy. It is the arrogance of the enemy that will defeat him. "All warfare is based upon deception." Sun Tzu. Make the enemy believe that they are superior in every way to you. Use their hubris to entrap them. Produce in them a sense of security that is false, then spring the trap. This is what has been going on now in America for over two weeks since the election of November 3, 2020. In that time the Democrats have been led to believe that they have won the election. They have machined the counting to produce enough ballots with a mark for Joe Biden that has allowed the their partners, the Main Stream Media, to announce that he is now 'President Elect', and that there is nothing that Donald Trump and the Republicans can do to stop him fro becoming POTUS. They believed that they had hidden the source of their win so thoroughly that no one would ever be able to see their perfidy in a rigged election. They believed they had learned their lesson from having lost the election in 2016 to be able to win with the same tactics in 2020. They are wrong.. God has Satan in that same position. Satan still believes that he can win against God by making sure that the events of Revelation 13 happen according to the prophecies. What God has done is put an alternative to death and destruction by opening an alternative in Reveation 10 that  brings LIFE to the world, not death. Satan and his followers have been decieved and believe they have won a great victory, when they have lost everything by their own misunderstanding of what God wants for the world.  God cannot be deceived, and neither can those that follow the words and teachings that Jesus brought to earth from the Father. Do not dispare; victory is ours!

Vote Count~ In the fallout of this past election comes the question that has been asked by 72.3 million people that now feel disenfranchised by the apparent results, and that is "Did my vote count?" We have been told that the vote of everyone counts, but it turns out that this probably not true given the current circumstance. Lou Dobbs (Fox News) said that what we are seeing is the end game of a Democrat plot to overthrough a duly elected President by voter fraud.  Benford's Law shows by it's number distribution charts in a forensic analysis of votes in Georga and Pennsylvania that the vote totals have been manipulated. Evidence is piling up that massive fraud has taken place not just in the numbers, but also in verified eyewitness accounts, and the MSM is still calling the President all sorts of not-so-nice names because he won't accept the results of that same media in declaring Joe Biden the winner. The wonderful thing in all of this is that right now WE know the result of all of this, and that is GOD WINS! The world is in in the middel of an even bigger election. The people of the USA, and indeed the world, have  already unknowingly '(for the most part) voted' in 2016 to reject the Death Road prophecies of Revelation that would have put us (today) in the middle of a time of death and destruction which was to occur before the Coming in the Clouds, for 'other' prophecies  seen in Revelation 10 that have led to the beginning of the fulfillment of Life Road prophecies of Peace, Prosperity, and LIFE that as yet have not been revealed. This fulfillment began with the election of Donald J. Trump as President, in 2016, and continue with his re-election now. All of this is to show that when all of the votes are counted that we will be able to live for a time in a world at peace, so that the message of God's salvation can go to the world.

STING~ The greatest Sting Operation in political history is in the process of unfolding right now, in real time. The Left thinks it has won a great election victory, when in fact they have participated in the demise of their party such that it will never be able to come back as currently constituted. The Left tried to rig the Presidential election by not only 'adjusting' the voting machines to change ballots after the 'lever' was pulled, but they also by sending out illegal ballots to people that in 'factories' would fill out using false names and addresses to pad the totals for their canditate. This to the tune of hundreds of thousands of illegal ballots. They have done this in every election in the modern era, and expected it to work this time. What they didn't count on was Donald J. Trump, a sophisticated GFS computer, and official USA ballots with a block-chain watermark printed on it that when scanned into the counting system showed which ballots were legal, and which were fake. A Sting makes a person believe they have succeded in their efforts, when in fact, they have shown that they have cheated, and are caught in the act. When this sting is revealed the Democrat party will collapse under the weight of the Truth, which they no nothing about, and did not see coming. This situation is a copy of the 'Sting' that God has set up from the foundation of the world, in allowing Satan to have his way in that very world in offering the people a plausible lie as if it is the truth, and causing them to believe that salvation is free to all through grace by faith. Satan believes he has won the victory in both of these instances. He believes that humanity is too stupid to be able to tell the difference between the truth and his lies that look like the truth, but are not, Satan, as has his servants on the politial Left, has been caught in a trap of their own making.

Watermark~ Well, it's 3 days past the Presidential Election in the USA, and there are stil no results as to who will be the POTUS. That is because there are not only physical issues with the counting process in several States, but there is significant evidence of FRAUD, not only in the counting but in the casting of ballots. Without going into excruciating detail there is verified evidence that fraudulent ballots were accepted as real by several Democrat states, that brought the challenger from way back in the count to either even or ahead. Lawsuits have been filed to challenge these ballots, and make the count accurate and valid. The Democrat Party thought that no one would notice that that the hundreds of thousands of ballots that they 'found' after the polls closed would be able to be challenged; after all they look identical to the official ballots that were sent to people by request for mail-in, or issued at the pollling places. However, there was a 'fly in that ointment'. These ballots had one thing missing that proves that they are fraudulent, and that is a Water Mark. This water mark is revealed by putting it under a special light, and only those ballots can be deemed as authentic and counted as official and true.  Under these conditions the outcome of the election is no longer in doubt, the current POTUS wins in a landslide, the Dems just don't know it yet. There is also a fool proof 'water mark' in Scripture that is revealed only under the bright light of Truth. That 'mark' is the Words of Jesus that He gave to His own eyewitness disciples while He was here on earth. Any other words by anyone that claims to be 'of God' that are not based solely upon these words (and the words of God in the Old Testament) are shown to be false under this clear and penetrating light. We are 'elected' into the Kingdom of God when we accept this mark.