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Category: Evil

To Be Rather Than To Seem

August 13, 2024 / / 0 Comments

To Be Rather than to Seem – ESSE QUAM VIDERI – People pretending to be something that they aren’t is not new. We are warned against them in ancient myth, in the Bible, and by great orators such as Cicero who spoke clearly against them in his Essay on Friendship 2000 years ago. People have not changed noticeably since anatomically correct humans first appeared 400,000 years ago. Only our technology changes. Biologically we still respond to stimuli as we have evolved to. This is another entry in What Your Father Should Have Taught You. In a world where so much is fake it is perhaps even more important that we cling to what is real in ourselves and our lives.

Welcome sojourners. It’s been a while but we will do better in the future. Welcome back to any who seek to live truly! I have been working behind the scenes so know that you are not forgotten or neglected. However, as a one-man operation I need to do all the business, research, marketing, tech, and … well, everything alone, while supporting my family. Some of you will wonder that this seems to have a more political bent than religious. However, I have always thought that God was doing something special in the formation of “the Great American Experiment” of freedom and people’s self-governance. Most of th world was against it. Europe, in particular, thought it was doomed to failure that the “masses” could not govern themselves. Jefferson and the others proved them wrong for 200 years. Now, however, I feel the battle for our society is not just a political battle but a moral battle where Divine Forces struggle. Chaos and immorality against order and freedom, good and evil, are today battling for the future of humanity. As Ronald Reagan once said, “If we lose freedom here there is nowhere for us to flee to.” For now my friends welcome back to: To Be Rather Than to Seem – ESSE QUAM VIDERE. (Published in its original form at SabersEdge.Online presented here slightly edited. – Rivan Elan.)

WHY SHOULD WE CARE WHAT SOME ROMAN WROTE?

I used to think that my dad (who told me stories of the horse drawn dairy wagon coming by and how he made friends with the driver and he would give him a piece of cheese from the large wheel of cheese he had to sell with the other dairy products,) had to be amazed from riding his horse into town as a boy when he wasn’t working to seeing men land on the moon. The world changes fast. That was why I discounted much of what he tried to tell me when I was young. I thought it was outdated. But I have since found out again and again that my life would have gone easier if I had listened in the first place.

He told me people are the same as they have always been and that is why history is valuable and why it seems to repeat itself. When situations arise that are similar to the past people respond in a similar way to how they have always responded. I was skeptical, after all so much in the world has changed. Only when I found out from science that we really were the same as the Romans and earlier man did I fully believe him and completely understand what he had always been trying to tell me. Proverbs and the events of history (not the dates but the events and stories of history,) have lessons for us because people are, and will continue to be, people.

Humans have not markedly changed biologically for at least 400,000 years and, unless your a communist who still believes in the 19th century idea that everything is determined by our education and society we know that our neurological reactions and responses are largely hard wired by our evolutionary biology. We can modify those reactions with training but our physiological (and therefore our mental response which is largely biochemical,) to danger, love, lust, greed, or what have you are the same as they were in the Romans, the Vikings, or the ancient Egyptians (this is the theme of Brett Weinstein’s book A Hunter Gatherer’s Guide to the 21st Century). The stimuli may change, our hard-wired reactions do not. Women still scream (a response to call for help from the more powerful and armed men or other wormen,) and men reach for weapons, draw themselves up for battle, or flee. Fight or flight. The response doesn’t change; only what we are running from. We evolved in a dangerous world and the struggle for survival is our natural state. Perhaps that is why every time we create a safe and stable civilization, we tear it apart. When the society is so successful we have no real enemies, we fight each other. We seem to see that today, don’t we?

So, when I considered what was going on in the world today, I remembered my father quoting Cicero who said in his Essay on Friendship (Laelius de Amicitia, Chapter 98,) that “Few are those who wish to be endowed with virtue rather than to seem so.” Virtute enim ipsa non tam multi praediti esse quam videri volunt, is the phrase in Cicero’s own Latin language and it has been handed down to us through the centuries in the phrase:

TO BE RATHER THAN TO SEEM –

ESSE QUAM VIDERI

WHY VIRTUE MATTERS

What got me started thinking of this was that when I told a 7-11 clerk that my drink was a refill he looked at me and said that I need to tell him when I come in if I am going to have a refill. I have been doing this for 40 years and reuse plastic cups until they break. He was the first to question me as to if I really brought my own cup. Apparently, there are people who will lie to save 30 cents on a drink. I guess that was one key advantage when we were a Christian nation. People believed that whatever they did God was watching. My father used to say, “You are not just lying to others you are lying to yourself and to your God. When you give less than your very best you are not just betraying your employer who contracted for you and your skills (all of your ability be it great or small,) but you are betraying yourself and God.”

This is very sad, that people care so little for their own integrity that they would compromise it to gain an advantage worth less than a dollar. But that seems to be where we have fallen to. Such moral relativism is also not knew. It was really promulgated by Karl Marx and Friederich Engels in the 1800s when they began espousing communist ideals. Ideals which have contaminated not only society and politics but also our religious and educational institutions.

People today will find it inconceivable that workers used to be able to give a lad or lass ten dollars and ask them to go get them a coke and the child would go do it and bring them back their change. Even after this had faded in America it was still like that in Germany when I was stationed there in the 80s. It amazed many of my fellow soldiers who grew up in big cities (and had only joined the army to escape a bad situation.)

It is very sad, but I am not really too surprised. As we turn from traditional Christian values we turn toward darkness and chaos. As civilizations turn from their root values they begin to unravel. The sum total of these daily, seemingly small decisions, unravel the fabric of trust that every society needs to survive. The Left, spurred on by fanatics, is actively undermining this very key element to society. Most do it unknowingly but hard- core Communists do it precisely because they want civilization to fall. They believe that only after it falls, and they exterminate a quarter of the population (this is their estimate not mine,) that only then can a new and fair world appear. Somehow, in the midst of this mass murder a new virtuous human they call “the new Communist man” will appear. Communism is very vague on how the lying, murdering, schemers who don’t believe in any moral compass or virtue produce this altruistic individual but Communism is very shakey on all of the details. Even without communists and nihilists we would follow this path of decay. Every civilization does. They ever have trodden this path into a post-civilizational dark age again and again as as the pagan Seneca noted in Ancient Rome noted when the old virtues, (see my article on Pietas here: Pietas, Key to Good Government and Good Living – SabersEdge.Online ) faded and the virtue that made the civilization great became a thing of the past. Civilizations can only survive when parents, grand- parents, professors, and schools all teach the virtues that form the base of their society. When no one in the family has these virtues – in other words when children do not learn them from their parents or their grandparents the chain is broken (and we have now educated three generations in moral relatavism,) and the civilization collapses. That is because a child has no one in their life to point them back to “the old ways of belief and virtue.” This happened to Rome as they moved from a Republic to an Empire.

In such a world, ESSE QUAM VIDERI becomes not only a foreign concept but an anathema as corrupt people cling to appearances and increasingly lack all substance. And then they blame society for it, not realizing that they are a part of that society and society itself is only made up of the actors in that society and their ideals. In other words, we ourselves have become the problem. Only by doing the hard work of self-development can society return to the virtues of the past. There will still be wicked among us, however the survival of civilization requires that most of us live honestly or it will collapse around our ears. Not only did the Romans know this 2000 years ago but it was recognized nearly 4000 years ago as well and is repeated continuously through the Biblical narrative. It has been true for a very long time, and anyone who claims it isn’t, will be hard pressed to find evidence to support their claim. As they say, the wicked always eat themselves just as the Democrats seem to be doing today. It is sad, the Democratic Party used to stand for worker’s rights and the ACLU used to do good.

THE WAY OF THE LIE LEADS TO DESTRUCTION

As I have said before, I often noticed when I was an agent doing interviews and interrogations that people tended to assume the everyone is like them – that everyone naturally acted and believed as they do, and just as truly good people tend to not even see the darkness in others and are sometimes what people have referred to as “lawful stupid” so too dishonest people project their own malfeasance and spite onto others. Elsewhere I have talked about the People of the Lie and Alexander Solzhenitsyn told us that is the way of communism [See here: It’s Always Been About Lies and Control – SabersEdge – Cutting Through the Lies to Get to the Truth and It’s Always Been About Lies and Control, Pt. II – SabersEdge – Cutting Through the Lies to Get to the Truth ]

You see this a lot with Leftists and increasingly among the educated and Democrats – especially now that the Democratic Party and our educational institutions have embraced Neo-Marxist values and eschewed all true virtue. That is why the Left is terrified that when Republicans take power, they will warp the Justice Department and use Federal Agencies to attack them just as they do to attack their own political opponents. Despite the fact that we have actually seen what a Trump Presidency looks like and he did not do that. The very action would be antithetical to returning America to his vision of America in the 1980s; the last real vision of greatness and stability in our history.

Corruption cannot imagine honesty and virtue because they know that they simply pretend to have virtue and they assume that everyone else is simply pretending to. A common saying in counterintelligence was that “everyone is guilty we just need to find what they have done” and then turn that over to law enforcement and let them do their thing. Of course, that is not just cynical but comes from a knowledge that our legal system is so convoluted, immense, and tyrannically invades every aspect of our lives it is harder to obey than the Biblical laws of Leviticus.

Even if the wicked ones do come to believe that there are honest people, they dismiss them as stupid, naive, or lacking imagination. They believe no one is honest, everyone is a criminal who is just faking it, and no one is good. They believe deep in their hearts that if people are stupid enough to accept their lies then they deserve to be fleeced of all they have. Of course, a society cannot survive once even close to half of a population has that view and, I would say from the reactions of filming rape in the subway (among others,) that the large cities are infected with this corrupt view of society. That is why a change in administration isn’t enough to fix them and that is why we used to lock up the amoral cretins who believe and act in this way. Of course, nowadays the Justice Department is more interested in locking up patriots and people who think the government should abide by the Constitution. That, more than anything else, should prove that our government of, by, and for the people has been usurped and the usurpers now rule.

If these people actually revealed who they were deep down, we would be disgusted and repulsed so the saying of Cicero itself is an anathema to them.

In truth, the Bible says that. “No one is good in the eyes of God, not one.” For, “we have all sinned and fallen short of the Grace and Glory of God” yet, God be good, we are saved by faith and grace not by our works. However, repeatedly God’s judgment falls upon those who have given themselves wholly to a corrupt heart, “those who seek after blood” and covet the power or possessions of others. Like Satan himself these people must deceive to survive because we would be repulsed by their soul laid bare. While God can and will forgive he won’t do so until the wicked turn away from their dark path (the word repent simply means to turn and go another direction.) But the longer the wicked follow the path of corruption the harder it is to hear their conscience (an imbedded inner voice God has placed in each of us to guide our actions.) It is amazing how consistent virtues are throughout society: don’t steal, don’t commit adultery, respect your parents and those in legitimate authority, don’t lie, and protect your children and family. These are so imbedded in our psyche that they exist in all societies to a greater or lesser degree. They are hardwired in us [see also: We Are Men of Action, Lies Do Not Become Us – SabersEdge – Cutting Through the Lies to Get to the Truth ].

I know people think like this because this is the prevailing attitude of counterintelligence agents, and it used to be mine. Counterintelligence constantly deals with the seediest most ruthless parts of society and, because they are about gathering information (and these scumbags are good sources of what the underside is doing,) CI Agents have to deal with them. Unlike police who arrest them CI Agents want the information they have, and we cannot get that as readily if they fear arrest. We have to work with the scum of society. It is a compartmentalization that works but leaves them thinking that the world is a very very dark place. It is commonly said that CI Agents start out as the best and the brightest, but the job corrupts them. I know many who came to believe, myself, included, that their task was to stand between the light and the darkness to keep the chaos and darkness at bay so the people could live in their make- believe Disneyland and believe the fantasy that everything is alright. That illusion cannot stand anymore. The darkness has bled through the barrier. Many with these kinds of jobs people come to feel they can no longer be part of normal society; that they are tainted by the darkness they fought. Indeed, it can take years of processing, and PTSD counseling to come to grips with it. I had decided that there could not be a God when I was doing that work. A retired MI colonel in our church told my parents that it takes time for an agent to recover from what they have seen and done. However, he told my folks that I had been raised well and that he knew that if they just gave me time I would return to the values of my youth. (I didn’t learn of this conversation until a decade later.) It took years to reset my way of thinking and my path of return (remember repentance means to turn and go a new way,) to God was a rocky one. But I still know the dark underside of society and the world. That makes it easy for me to see it and I often wonder why others cannot see what I can see so clearly.

Corrupt people, like Neo-Marxists, cannot imagine someone who operates according to principle or virtue because they have none. They may put a great deal of effort into pretending that they do have virtue and that they are good people but it is a lie. If they do encounter people who are genuinely good then they tell themselves that honest people are simply honest because their stupid or naive. If they believe their lies, they think, then the fools deserve to have everything taken from them. I guess it makes it easier to excuse your own faults that way. Unfortunately, far too many of these people have been allowed to assume power in our government and bureaucracy and to teach our children. Great or small corruption reveals itself foremost in their actions and results. As Jesus said, “you will know them by their fruits.” “A good tree does not produce bad fruit and a bad tree cannot produce good fruits.” In this parable we are the trees he is talking about.

Because I have been trained in interrogation and statement analysis I analyze what politicians say and the corrupt reveal themselves in their own lies. But someone who is not trained has more trouble seeing it. That is how the People of the Lie try to survive and live among us, their victims.

More common, most people are not so extreme or as lost as communist operatives. As Uri Bezmenov said there are those who actually believe the rhetoric. Communism not only allows for this they depend on them as cannon fodder. They call them useful idiots. Juri said these idealists must be killed immediately after the Communist revolution because they actually believe the lies. They therefore respond poorly when they realize that the revolution has been betrayed and it was all about power. But they still are lazy and seek to claim virtue or goodness that they haven’t earned. Great or small they still often reveal themselves by their own words.

DOING WHAT IS RIGHT – BEING GENUINE

The unchurched don’t understand sin. They imagine it is disobeying the somewhat arcane laws in the Old Testament, but it is not. Saint Paul made it clear. “He who knows what is right to do and does not do it – for him it is sin.” That is a tall order. It is not just avoiding wrong actions but in actually doing the good that is at our hand, that is our task. We must actually be virtuous and not just pretend to be. The more we act virtuous the more it will become a part of who we are, but it is a tall order and takes a lot of work, that is why so many just fake it. It is easier and they are lazy. But you, my friends, know what is right and how high the stakes truly are!

When I was working for Immigration and we got a new center director who said, “I know you all try to claim hours on your time sheets that you don’t work – but that ends now.” I thought, “Great, we have a liar and a cheater for a leader who assumes everyone else is a liar and a cheater. We are in trouble.” Indeed we were. This superficial fool destroyed the morale of a center with nearly 1000 good and conscientious workers…(OK, not all of them were good and conscientious but I think most of them were.) Of course, as problems arose and there were falling production numbers and rising absenteeism, he viewed it as the workers fault and not his own leadership…at least in his mind. He also did things like continuously challenge people who were hospitalized or disabled to constantly produce medical statements – even for long term and permanent ailments – to justify their doctor appointments or missing work. What kind of person sees someone in a walker after a car accident and assumes they are faking? How this man rose to leadership is a crime in itself and I seriously began to question the government that would put such a man in charge. He never once stopped to consider that these were essentially the same people that were putting in 60-hour work weeks to remove the massive backlog of immigration cases for the two years before he arrived. For some reason, people didn’t put out the same effort for this guy. Go figure.

We are talking about this because this entire train of thought started because I refill cups as my humble effort to recycle, reduce, and reuse resources that I have personal responsibility for. It may not seem like much but between my son and I we can keep 730 cups a year out of the landfill – and I have been doing this for over 40 years. My earliest still serviceable cups are from Micheal Keaten’s “Batman” movie and the “Catwoman” movie which were collectable when the movies came out. If I forget a cup and have to buy a new one then I reuse it as long as it can be rinsed out and reused – most stores have a sink handy for doing so. These are things that are in my grasp that I myself can effect and I decided to do so because I believe we all must try to live sustainably. As a Christian, but also as a good citizen, it is my responsibility to conserve and not waste resources unnecessarily. 730 cups a year in the landfill is unnecessary and it is something I can do that is in my power to change in 40 years that can amount to over 22,900 cups and I have five kids – each carried their own cup into the convenience store when we stopped for drinks on trips. My dad emphasized that we need to act out our beliefs and not just mouth the words to sound good. Be good, don’t just pretend to be good. Sure, none of us are without fault, but we must do the best we can. The world is big but if everyone does what they can it will make a difference not only in their own life but as an example to others.

ESSE QUAM VIDERI

My sons still recycle (our belief and actions are passed onto our children who have spent a lifetime watching what we do, even if they don’t listen to what we say.) They may not have their back hall full of bins for two different kinds of glass and plastic, tin, and aluminum and a compost bucket to recycle, reduce, and reuse kitchen waste by composting it in the garden.

Around the 1960s, when Marxist philosophy started to seriously take hold in general society, the atheists began to act like no one can be a hero if they have faults. This too, is a lie. Christians and our society which was based upon Christian values, knew that no one was perfect. Heroism was defined as people who rose above their own faults to do great things and make a difference in the world. You couldn’t “cancel” people because everyone knew that they also had thoughts. Atheistic Communists follow the examples of Alinsky and Marx in pointing at the faults of others to keep people from looking at how badly messed up their own life is. When the radical communist atheists decided that you cannot be a hero unless your perfect the world scoffed. But now that they have controlled the education of up to three generations their corrupt way of thinking has infected our entire society.

When I was in college I was on the Leadership Team of Ecology Now at the university. I organized demonstrations, boycotts, and campaigns to hold leadership accountable, save parks and play areas for children, and promote recycling at the university and in the community.

This way of living comes very much from my father. He never marched in a demonstration in his life but he quietly lived according to his values and tried to act according to his beliefs. My father, growing up on a family farm, greatly respected the Earth and nature as being a gift from God and His world that we were charged to keep in His stead. Together we took recyclables every month to the distribution center. He passed that on to me. When I became a pastor I realized that when it says “man was given dominion over the earth” the Hebrew word is clear an would better be equated to “man was made steward of God’s Earth” in the same way a steward of a castle in the middle ages was responsible for the castle and ran it in the lord’s absence but he knew that at some point the lord would return and demand an account. I try to remain conscious of being able to give an account of my actions, I am not a saint. I am human and I have faults. But I am conscious of my actions and in-action and try to keep in mind that sin, is failing to do the right that we know that we should do. I don’t care if you are a Christian or not. Such a belief is a better way to live.

Environmentalists use to know that the little things made a difference. Now, too often they want to force people to buy electric cars, wind turbines, or other doo-dads that make the very corporations that pollluted this world even richer.

When I was in the Army I was not as careful until, as an agent, I was driving down the New Jersey Turnpike toward NYC and saw the outlines of a trio of 3 mountains in the distance. Only as I got closer, I could see the bulldozers crawling up the sides. These were not natural mountains; they were mountains of garbage from New York City. Mountains of Garbage! How much smaller would those be if everyone in New York reused their cups, carried their own bags to the store, or some other small deed that they could do. I realize this goes against our conditioning. We are conditioned to a “throw away” society and most of the people who claim to be “environmentalists” throw away tons of garbage in their life without a moment’s thought. They want to be SEEN as Green and as good people but are unwilling to even do something as simple as reusing their cups, they want to get the benefit of the title with as little effort as possible. They pretend and give a false facade.

For committed communists it is all a lie anyway, remember: “All that exists deserves to perish.” Those who live a lie will hate what Cicero and the Bible have to say about being genuine and living out your beliefs. In fact, in Hebrew belief and action are so interrelated that it would be inconceivable for someone to say they believed something but didn’t act on it because ACTION defined what our beliefs really are.

Obviously, some of us do try to be real and to live out our beliefs. Recycling cups are one way I do it, maintaining a website to counter the empty narrative is another. Others do other things. I would be interested in knowing what you do to live out your beliefs. Please comment below. Remember, I never sell anyone’s information.

Leftists read Marx, not Cicero: TO BE RATHER THAN TO SEEM – ESSE QUAM VIDERI

People all over are turning out to demonstrate for issues they don’t understand and haven’t thought through. They want to be seen as “good” but they are unwilling to actually DO anything in their own daily life to make a difference. They want others to do what’s right and others to pay the consequences. They will show up for a day or two to demonstrate but they won’t actually change the way they live.

This happens all over. Not only in ancient Rome or in demonstrations in the streets or on TV. It happens everywhere. Even where you work.

When I was in Immigration a woman in a meeting was haranguing us about the environment and how the center needed to provide recycling bins for the workers. She said this while drinking out of her plastic cup, while holding a baby using disposable diapers and holding a bottle that used disposable plastic liners.

“Why don’t people just put a box under their desk and toss in their pop cans during the week and then they can take them home on Friday and recycle them with their home recyclables.” I asked.

“No one is going to do that!” She said. (What she really meant is that she wouldn’t do that and therefore didn’t believe anyone else would either.)

“I do,” I said.

“Yeah, sure you do.” The smart ass hypocrite yipped.

“He does,” one of my coworkers said.

“Yeah,” another one spoke up. “I see him leave every Friday with his bag of recyclables.”

Environmentalists used to help teach people a better way to live. My father lived the army slogan of “Lead by example.” When I was younger “Recycle, Reduce, and Reuse” was recommended as a way of life – each person doing what they could to make a difference. It may not feel like changing the world but in many ways it makes a bigger difference than we imagine. It is hard to change habits of a lifetime. But if we fail, we just need to decide to try again and do better in the future.

But too many people don’t want to take responsibility today. They want the government to take responsibility for them and force people to comply. Somehow, they believe that taking money from corporations or investing in “Green Energy” trusting the people who ruined the environment to now save it is an actual solution. That is a solution that Americans never would have stood for (or fallen for,) even a few generations ago. Back when Americans knew that the responsibility for their government, the environment, energy use, and family were their own and not something to be left to others.

Jordan Peterson says that people today (especially Leftists,) want to claim virtue that they didn’t earn.

TO BE RATHER THAN TO SEEM – ESSE QUAM VIDERI

“Few are those who wish to be endowed with virtue rather than to seem so.” Virtute enim ipsa non tam multi praediti esse quam videri volunt.

This is a problem with humanity from Rome down until today. In truth from the Garden of Eden to today. As I told my District Superintendent once when he thought we have moved beyond John Wesley “I don’t think we’ve learned anything since Moses gave the Ten Commandments. Looking at the news today we are still doing the same things.”

As one parliamentarian said in a speech in the Italian Parliament “They hired our parents to destroy the world and now they want to hire us to save it. But here is the clincher – at a profit.”

Perhaps if we all took the time to read Cicero, Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, and the writings of Paul or about the life of Christ, or listen to these things through an audiobook, we would not be so easily taken in. Perhaps that is why discussions around some of the firesides in the Civil War in the 1800s showed more awareness of political realities than discussions today around the dinner table. They were not distracted by sports – that was an intentional distraction manufactured for us by the Fabian society citing the “Bread and Circuses” in Rome (the idea that if you give the plebs bread and games you can do anything you want in government and they won’t care. The Fabians had a classical education too, and they decided to use it against us to destroy what we have built.

Those who were educated in the past read the classics and they had a better understanding of logic, history, and people. They may not all have read Cicero but reading classical works prepared them for dealing with people better than our Public Education does, but Cicero and Marcus Aurelius were favorites of many of our founding fathers.

If you get nothing else from this article, I hope you get that the little things we do can add up and make a difference and we will never know how they affect the actions of others by our example. In my opinion we will all live better lives if we strive to be what we want to appear to be. Psychologically and Sociologically this is called Praxis. As Nietzsche said, if someone tries to be something for a long period of time, in the end it will be difficult for him to be anything else.

TO BE RATHER THAN TO SEEM – ESSE QUAM VIDERI

“Few are those who wish to be endowed with virtue rather than to seem so.” Virtute enim ipsa non tam multi praediti esse quam videri volunt.

Don’t Be Lawful Stupid – Wesley’s Rules for Life

May 5, 2024 / / 0 Comments

It was Jesus that called upon all Christians to “be innocent as doves and wise as serpents.” Those in games and stories who equate the good guys with being “lawful stupid” don’t really understand good, (and having worked in the gaming industry,) they absolutely don’t understand evil. Equally so many Christians, who have fallen for the heresy of what I call “the Barney Gospel” (the idea that everything is about love and principles and violence is always wrong,) this is totally not Biblical, but the lies are regularly told from pulpits throughout Europe and America. [We will discuss Good and Evil and what I mean by those things in a future article.]

Despite the complete Biblical testimony which is balanced and designed for real life, ideologues from all sides have tried to make the Bible into something it is not. Humans like to follow rules and they want life simple. However, life is not simple, and neither is God. Jesus also said that “laws were made for man, man was not made for the law.” By this he was talking about his disciples being hungry and actually gathering food on the Sabbath when the Holy People said there was to be NO work done. Jesus acknowledged the law but said my disciples are hungry and they need to eat. The rules that the human church had made to interpret what the Bible said as “observe the Sabbath day and keep it holy” were not what God intended. He wanted people to take a break one day a week off from all their work (a radical idea in a world that had no days off except on the New and the Full moon.) God did not want people to go hungry when they were doing God’s work on the Sabbath. As a Pastor I regularly worked on the Sabbath, often more than 8 hours. In fact, some pastors have a problem in their 70-hour work weeks in that they don’t take time off for prayer, rest, and study. Burnout is a regular occurrence.

Many Christians have embraced the “innocent as doves” part but fail to be “wise as serpents.” In fact, some use the “innocent as doves” as an excuse to not have to act because it would stir up controversy. Remember, that “if you cannot say anything nice don’t say anything at all” is not a Christian way of life. It is a coward’s way that advises people to “keep your head down, don’t make waves.” Many call these people “sheeple.”

All over the world people attack the Bible for things either taken out of context or because of what Christians they knew have done to them that have nothing to do with authentic Christianity. They mistakenly use actions of Nominal Christians (people who wear a cross or call themselves Christians but do not know the first thing about being an authentic Christian,) as indicating what real Christians believe. Let me know in the comments if you have encountered this anywhere in your experience.

John Wesley was an Anglican Priest in the 18th Century whose preaching fathered over 185 denominations from the African Methodist Episcopal to the Nazarene to the Global Methodist. He offered three rules to live a Christian Life – 1st Do No Harm; 2nd Do All the Good You Can; and 3rd Attend to the Ordinances of the Church. Now language was used a bit different in the 18th Century – the 1700s, even the late 1700s were a long time ago so lets talk about them.

The first two really aren’t very difficult at first glance. At least they aren’t difficult to explain – they require constant vigilance and effort to accomplish.

First, Do No Harm – God made the world and called it good. Then we began mucking it up. People like to blame bad things on God but most bad things can be traced back to people and their actions or inaction. Science is even identifying that cancer, hormonal imbalance, and infertility can often be placed at the door of industrialists in packaging, pharmaceuticals, and food production who use chemical ingredients not found in nature and that have not been fully tested for their effects on humans.

There is more to this rule than simply doing “good deeds” there is also the requirement to stand for what is right. That is what served to build Western Society in the way it grew. Repeatedly, men and women chose to stand for what was right against the general push of society.

As Saint Paul said, “He who knows what is right to do and does not do it, for him it is sin.” That, if we are honest with ourselves, is an indictment against all of us. We have all, at one time or another, remained silent when we should have spoken truth to power, or truth to massed ignorance.

These are not problems faced in most primitive societies. Rather, they seem to be problems that have to do with our ‘modern’ way of life. As corporations take cheaper shortcuts in order to make more money by using chemicals and artificial preservatives to give longer shelf-life to their already overly processed and artificial foods those chemicals, as well as the hormones and drugs they give to food animals, genetic modification of crops, and pesticides that carry through the crops and into our cereal boxes. It is in the ‘modern’ world that we find a proliferation of cancer, numerous digestion difficulties, clogged arteries, obesity, unexplained pain and bloating, and much much more.

If your father or mother has a heart attack or stroke you may well ask God why. However, perhaps you would be more accurate to blame the foods available and stresses of the corporate lifestyle than to set the blame at the foot of God. Imagine the way life would be if corporate leaders followed this first rule of the Christian life and really and truly “did no harm.”

When we were predominantly a Christian Country with Christian values there were numerous cases of businessmen who refused to take actions that would increase their profits because they were morally wrong. It is so bad today that universities have started demanding that business majors take an ethics class because we increasingly live in a world where no one knows right from wrong. They increasingly believe the lie that everything is relative when, amazingly across cultures, rules amazingly similar to the Ten Commandments have regularly cropped up. Either there is a universal idea of good, bad, loyalty, and betrayal, or we are hard-wired through evolution to believe these things because those who rejected them were banished from society and their genes couldn’t reproduce. Despite that, every generation has its narcissists and psychopaths. But America and the Globalists seem to want to make those traits into virtues.

Christianity used to hold capitalism in some degree of check. The government, corporations, and individuals knew that if they flagrantly defied Judeo-Christian principles the public would turn against them. Even those who denied Deity and Religion had ideas of right and wrong that were based on the Judeo-Christian principles. Indeed, without religion, (as we are finding out today in our society.) There is no check on the potential wickedness, selfishness, and greed of humanity.

Moses was drafted by God to be that check and to carry his message to the people as were and are the prophets. Christ was sent to embody that check upon our wickedness. Without religion the only moral imperative is survival of your own tribe and to hell with anyone else. This is how the world outside of the West operates. Western Civilization built on the foundations of Rome, Christendom, and the Norse/Germanic egalitarian society traditions where their philosophers and the Havamal came to conclusions that were very close to what is found in the Proverbs and Wisdom literature of the Bible. There was an understanding that in Christendom you could basically trust your fellow Christians (whether, Catholic, Amish, Protestant, Quaker or any of over a hundred other ways to follow Christ, to obey the rule of law, to not bear false witness, and to conduct themselves with honor and respect for life even in war.

“Do no harm” means to NOT remain silent when lies are being spread and injustice occurs. “Do no harm” is a rule calling us to dare to NOT look the other way when crime, extortion, or government or corporate power does wrong. “Do no harm” means NOT stepping over the one who is beaten and bleeding and NOT crossing over to the other side of the street as happened in the story of the Good Samaritan that Christ told. It was the Samaritan, the outcasts of Jewish society in the first century, who stopped and helped the man to an inn and paid for his room, bored, and medical care – even though he didn’t know him. While the “good” people looked the other way and didn’t want to get involved. “Do no harm” means acting sometimes even when we are scared to and fear ridicule, rejection, or legal consequences (such as hiding Jewish families in Nazi Germany.)

Indeed, the song Amazing Grace was written by a slave trader (obviously someone who prioritized money over what is right,) in celebration of his encounter with Christ and his salvation. When he became a Christian he gave up his life as a slaver and spearheaded the campaign in England to make the international slave trade a thing of the past. Not because of secular values but because of Christian values. [See: An Amazing Story – ofNaturesGod.com ] One man acting on principle made a difference in the world.

Indeed, you can trace most of the rights, benefits, and blessings of twentieth century Western Society can be traced back to Christianity, Western philosophers, Rome, or the Germanic peoples. It was people who took their own principles, refused to compromise and made a nuisance of themselves that changed the world. It starts with one voice raised and speaking the truth. We make a mistake when we tell ourselves the whole world feels as we do. This is the heritage of Western Civilization, Western Philosophy, and Christianity and the value it places on all people and life itself.

John Wesley’s second rule of life is Do All the Good You Can. Yet, we are not all wise. Indeed, for some Do All the Good You Can meant to bring the teachings of Western Civilization to the rest of the world. Unfortunately, they did not always respect local cultures. Over all, however, if you look at the nations that are doing the best economically, and have the highest standards of living, they are the countries that are still part of the British Commonwealth or who were linked to them historically. That is because colonizers not only brought domination, they also brought respect for law and order, libraries, hospitals, sanitation, and schools to places that didn’t have them.

Most people don’t know but one of the goals of communism was to attack colonialism and use guilt to get the West to abandon their colonies before the colony was ready to take on the responsibilities of a modern society. Then, in the resulting chaos, the Communists could step in and re-order the society. Despite Marx’ predictions Communism has only been able to dominate in societies that were per-industrial or behind on the industrial curve from the West. This is not the only thing Marx was wrong on. [See: Are We the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave? Or Did We Lose the Cold War? – SabersEdge – Cutting Through the Lies to Get to the Truth ; and Admitted Goals of Marxists in America – SabersEdge – Cutting Through the Lies to Get to the Truth ]

For some, deluded by the media and government misinformation, “doing good” was acting in ways that browbeat and isolated people who didn’t get vaccinated. The abandoned the principles of Liberty and America (if schools had taught even a modicum of understanding of Western Liberties – or even if they really believed “my body my choice” then they would have rejected these lies). But, as is so often the case, fear over-rode common sense and people acted in ways that were wholly against American Philosophy by marginalizing people who thought differently from them and who sought to exercise their rights over their own body. But even these natural rights are no longer understood in our society. [See also: Denial of Natural Laws and Natural Rights Endangers Our Survival – SabersEdge – Cutting Through the Lies to Get to the Truth ; We Now Live In A Totalitarian State – SabersEdge – Cutting Through the Lies to Get to the Truth ] (those who understood virology and still were thinking critically as opposed to those driven by irrational fear and ignorance.) Such people tell themselves they are good people but they are really self-interested people trying to cover their self-interest in a cloak of virtue. This is not the type of “doing good” that Wesley was speaking of. He was speaking of doing good in a rational and prayerful manner with the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

This brings us to Wesley’s Third Rule of Life – attend to the ordinances and disciplines of the Faith. Because you cannot have any knowledge of the outcome of your actions – but God does know and by faithfully attending to the spiritual disciplines you learn those ways (although honestly, many who claim to be Christian don’t – as Father Hoolighan told me once: “Mr. Business went to church. He never missed a Sunday. But Mr. Business went to Hell for what he did on Monday.”

Ordinances and disciplines of the faith include studying the Bible and religious teachings, attend worship services, pray and meditate on the scriptures, seek communion with God, and grow in the faith. [If you want to grow in the Faith I have found the writings of the Benedictine Order to be incredibly helpful in living a godly life. See AUSCULA – Listen With The Ears Of Your Heart – ofNaturesGod.com ] Also, included in this was helping the poor and the destitute as Christ commanded and sharing the good news that we can escape this treadmill and the hell of this world we have made.

Christianity has been dumped on a lot with half-truths and out and out lies a lot in the 20th and 21st Centuries.

However, the world was arguably a better place when the West identified as Christendom. As for the Crusades, that deserves its own article but let me make it clear that Europe and Christian countries had been invaded for almost 400 years by Islamic nations before the first Crusade was launched. That is not opinion it is historical fact! And the first crusade was launched not to conquer Islamic countries but it was launched to defend the Christian city of Byzantium that was under attack by Islamic armies. Spain was conquered by Islam as was all of Northern Africa and now they were battling to destroy the Roman Empire whose capital was in Byzantium. Persia/Iran and Afghanistan were not originally Islamic. They were conquered and converted. Charles Martel turned back invaders in France or all of Europe would have been conquered long before now. Rome had been sacked, Christian Russia and balkans were repeatedly invaded, and FINALLY, Christendom rallied to defend Byzantium and the Eastern Roman Empire. Christians rallied again when Vienna was beseiged by the armies of Islam when an army of Germans and Poles led by Jan and the Polish Winged Hussars saved Vienna and saved Europe from the armies of Islam again in the 1600s.

Today we allow those armies across our border without restraint while Islamic Imams preach that after centuries of trying to conquer the West Jihad has a new form. They should now infiltrate the West have more babies than Europeans and Americans and take over their countries from within. This is not my idea. This is what THEY have said in their temples and websites. Why is it that we repeatedly ignore what our enemies themselves say they are going to do to us. Are we that fragile that we cannnot understand there are people in the world that hate us. That didn’t go well with Hitler and ignoring their aggression and stated intent to destroy America and the West won’t go well today. You can hide you head in the sand but it won’t change the result – it just means that you won’t see the sword when it falls. That is not skepticism that is denial and cowardice.

After the Crusades it was Christians that spearheaded the war against slavery and the international slave trade, not Muslims, not Hindus, not Pagans, but Christians. It was not secular society it was Christian society. Secular society didn’t give a damn about anyone but themselves and they have a long history of violating rights not preserving them. The most educated and advanced society in Europe in the 1930s was Germany and we all should know what happened there. While the Left is eager to distance themselves from the Nazis the more I study them the more clearly that they were, indeed, socialists. However, unlike the international socialist/communist movement they were nationalist socialists and after gaining power they broke the power of the right-wing conservative groups that didn’t toe the line of the national socialist worldview.

Oh, witches? Yeah, history has identified a few thousand witches killed by ‘the church’ which was horrible and wrong. But more witches were imprisoned and driven underground by secular doctors who accused them of practicing medicine without a license than were persecuted by the church and we don’t hear about that very much do we?

Its convenient for society not to mention the tens of thousands of Christians killed by pagans and the tens of thousands of Christians and Jews who are today still being killed in Islamic countries. If they mentioned it they may have to do something about it.

Somehow secular society, which has on its hands the 100 millions killed by Communists and the 6 million jews killed by Hitler. As I have said, Jews, like Christians, are still being killed in Islamic countries today. Israel is literally fighting for its right to exist. Palestinians don’t want a 2-state solution. “From the River to the Sea” means there will be no Jews left alive from the river to the sea, they are very clear about that in their own websites.

Selective morality is no morality at all.

Palestinians want to divest Jews of the lands of Israel and Judah that were theirs all the way back to the days of the Pharoah and the Babylonians. The Jews are the indigenous people of the area and the Palestinians the colonizers. They do not allow any Jews in Palestine but Muslims, Arab Bedouins, and more are allowed to serve as judges and in political office in Israel. Israel follows the values of a modern Western State including having one of the largest gay populations in Tel Aviv in the Middle East – one of the few places in the Middle East gays can live and not be killed.

But all of these facts are ignored or twisted by lying “fact-checkers” and other media magnates and their lackeys because they don’t fit the narrative. It’s easier to lie to people when you have stolen their education. [see also: Who Stole Your Education? Were You Indoctrinated in Ignorance? – SabersEdge – Cutting Through the Lies to Get to the Truth ]

The level of ignorance by the Left leaning political organizations of American campuses are disgusting to me. Universities are supposed to be centers of learning and not centers and instigators of anti-semitism. I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised with all the Marxist professors because Marx was both of Jewish decent and flagrantly anti-Jewish…in fact Communism opposes all religions. I suppose because religious conflicts didn’t kill enough people to sate the blood-lust endemic to all communist states that have ever existed.

[But as I write this evidence is growing that many of those arrested in college demonstrations may not be students but agents of radical Islam and their sycophants.]

The ignorance of history is endemic in today’s society. As it has been for thousands of years. I guess that is why humans do the same things, and making the same mistakes, over and over again.

Fortunately, one of the ordinances of the church is communion. Communion should be taken only after confession and prayer. You don’t need to go through confession in the Catholic sense but before you become one with Christ through the ritual of Communion you must be sin free. For us humans that means we must repent all that we have done, and all that we have failed to do, that for us was sin. The glory of Communion is that when we repent and decide to turn from our failings that God throws those sins “as far as the East is from the West” and remembers them no more. While humans may nurse affronts and wrongs against us, God is able to completely forget transgressions that we confess and repent to God for.

I love Communion because I am a very imperfect servant of the Living God. I make mistakes regularly. Like King David I am not a paragon of virtue, however, I do love the Living God and my experiences and relationship with that mysterious indefinable but loving entity. Every time I take communion I know (from having read and taught the Bible,) that my sins are forgotten and as I take the elements into my body so Christ re-enters me in a special way and I am made new once again. A fresh start. Clean and new as Christ promised: “Behold, I make all things new.”

That is special and unique in human society. You cannot get that through the legal system. You cannot get it from Universities, and you sure as hell cannot get it from Communism and the Left who cancel, attack with law-fare, and imprison, people “at the drop of a hat,” as they say. But Christianity in each communion service offers a fresh start for all who legitimately repent of their sins. Maybe that is why secular society hates them so, because they know that no matter what they do they will never be free of their own past and Christians get fresh starts regularly.

Attend to the ordinances and disciplines of the Church and seek communion frequently. Especially if you are like me and need to make a fresh start often.

Whether you are Christian or not I suggest you consider at least the first two injunctions of 1st Do no Harm and 2nd Do all the good you can, as you journey through life and you will find that, ultimately, it makes a difference in society. Don’t be like those doomed to repeat history due to their own ignorance and stand up for truth wherever you may find yourselves. Don’t run from a “fight” but when truth is called for to oppose evil and falsehood stand in the gap. We don’t put our heads in the sand, or pretend not to see injustice. Draw sabers, ride to the sound of the guns, and cut through the lies to get to the truth, and…

[Edited version, the original was published on Sabersedge.Online another website of SabersEdge Foundation, an educational association that says the quiet parts outloud.]

Against the Darkness!

July 31, 2022 / / 0 Comments

I know that many think there is no evil but I have experienced something that seems to feed upon negative emotions, suffering, and destruction and it hates the light, joy, and love. In its presence, the hairs on my arms and the back of my neck stand up and I feel cold, sometimes dizzy. Things that terrorize children and cause them to scream and point when adults no longer have the eyes to see, where animals brace and growl with the hair on their back standing up and they jump if you reach out to reassure them. Perhaps you want to call it something else but it seems to me that this is exactly what evil is and how it has been described for millennia.

I have performed a couple of exorcisms as a pastor and investigated infestations of an unseen presence. Besides paranormal groups, my youngest son and my wife have worked with me to investigate various unseen presences. I was contacted by some friends of a family member who needed a minister to accompany them to an investigation in Omaha. In this investigation, there were two children that had died but continued to come up and play with their toys. Their toys would roll, bounce, or otherwise go across the room, and it was a flat floor – the wind does not account for the ball bouncing down the hall toward us. However, the toddler girl who was still alive in the family was terrified of a “diamond man” who came into her room.

The investigation seemed to indicate that the deceased grandmother was present protecting the spirit children and the young girl who saw the diamond man. Both the husband and the wife had experienced the man’s mother (now deceased,) coming in and sitting on the edge of the bed, as she did when had been alive. They not only felt her sit down but when the lights were on they could see the indentation in the bed. She seemed to remain in the house and would hurry the spirits of the children into another part of the house when the “diamond man” showed up. Talking with the family we decided to cleanse the house with sage and prayers and try to get the diamond man to leave without banishing the children or grandma. As far as I know, it worked. I didn’t hear from them again.

This story about the grandma sitting on the bed reminded me of when I was just about to fall asleep, I was very depressed and down. My wife and I were staying in different places and were not getting along. I was lonely and I felt my German Shepherd get on the bed. I had two but the female seemed to have the idea that when my wife was gone that she became the alpha female and I woke up once or twice with the dog in bed with me with her head on my wife’s pillow. The dogs weren’t allowed on the bed because I had asthma back then. Anyway, the lights were off and I felt the dog climb up onto the bed, kinda surreptitiously like so that I wouldn’t notice. I did notice because I knew what it felt like and had caught her trying that before. “Claire get down!” I commanded as I sat up and turned on the light (we had named our dogs Francis and Claire after St. Francis and his sister in Christ. It was then I realized that Claire had died a couple of years ago and Francis was in the hallway and came to the door to see what I had yelled about. I shut off the light and lay back down. “Claire, you can get back on the bed if you want to. I miss you.” She had to be put to sleep due to cancer and as I held her when she died she licked my wrist. Kinda broke up my son, and me.

There are other times I know of spirits making a difference. I had a parishioner awakened once by her husband. “You need to get up the house is on fire!” She immediately got up and dressed and turned around, asking her husband what was burning. It was then she remembered that her husband had recently died. I could offer many other stories. Another parishioner feels she was warned by God that her husband was dying. She was alone in her house doing dishes and someone said “Go check on Verlin.” She was startled and thought someone was in the house with her. She searched the house but no one was there. She went back to her dishes and heard it again only louder and more insistent, “Go check on Verlin!” She got into the pickup and drove out to the field where he was working and his hand had been severed by the threshing machine. She drove him to the emergency room in Cameron, which was miles away, and they were able to save his life and re-attach his hand. He was in shock so he couldn’t have helped himself. The voice saved him.

As I told my son when he was little and came up and told me about a little girl he saw. With kids, you never know if it is an imaginary friend or what. But I have always believed the reason we don’t see things is we have been taught by society that this stuff isn’t real. So we come to dismiss the information our senses take in. Children don’t yet know this but I have become convinced that everyone has at least some potential in this area. (Army experiments reported in Military Intelligence magazine in the 80s – the unclassified experiments, obviously – demonstrate with 98.6 percent statistically significant results that everyone has some sort of psychic or telekinetic ability. But it’s like walking and running. Almost everyone can do it but that doesn’t mean everyone can be an Olympic runner.) Anyway, I asked my son to describe her. He did and I had seen her in the house too. (A friend told me she had known everyone who had lived in my house and no one died there. But the girl wore a shift that looked like it was from the 1800s and I venture to say that she couldn’t have been sure that no one had died in this spot then.) “Did she scare you?” I asked my son. “No, she wasn’t scary at all.” “I don’t think so either son. I think she is just someone who died and is here because we can see her. Maybe she’s lonely, I don’t know. But you tell me if it gets scary at all and then we can do something about it.”

When I was young I explored the occult and summoning things from other realms. That didn’t go well. I left for the Army but people complained about things in my folk’s basement where I had lived. When I came home on leave I woke up and saw an evil-looking face staring at me. I told my sister who was a pastor and had first taught me to meditate and who was “powerful in the Force.” But we didn’t do anything since we decided it must have been a dream. But, we noted, that my German Shepherd at the time, refused to go downstairs to my bedroom and living room. He stayed on the landing. He always slept on or at the foot of my bed between me and the door. Always. But not here. We went out to dinner and left him downstairs since my mom didn’t like dogs or animals in the house. When we came back he had tried to get out of the basement landing. We knew that because of this 120 lb. The German shepherd had gouged scratch marks a quarter inch deep in the door leading to the upstairs. Curiouser and curiouser. He never had had such anxiety before…maybe it was the new place? Later, my mom called a furnace repair man. She took him downstairs and showed him the furnace. She was then working in the kitchen at the top of the stairs when she heard this man run up the stairs and slam his way through the door to the outside. She followed him out and he was trying to light a cigarette but his hands were shaking. My mom asked him if something was wrong and he said, “No, I’m alright I was just startled. You didn’t tell me you had a dog it surprised me and I guess my imagination ran away with me.” He smiled uncertainly. My mom was confused. “I don’t have a dog,” she said. “Do you have some kind of pet, grey and black, furry, and about yay big?” He held his hands about 2 feet apart. “No,” she said. He didn’t say anything. She went back inside as he looked away and smoked his cigarette. After a while, she thought she should see if he was alright. He had left leaving his tool bag and a thick binder downstairs. She called him up and reminded him he left his stuff and asked if he wanted to get it or if she should send it to him. He said no. He didn’t want anything to do with anything that is or had been in her basement. Then my mom finally decided maybe there was something going on. She called my sister and my sister went downstairs and investigated. She wrote me that I had opened a portal and when we got back she would help me with how to do, and close those things.

The darkest encounter I had, besides my portal, was ironically in a church. The thing I exorcised was the darkest encounter I had experienced up to that point. As I said, when the pastor told me they thought there was something in their church and God seemed to tell her in prayer that I could help. While I thought that it was odd since I had always thought that demons couldn’t enter hallowed ground I thought perhaps some parishioners had brought negative energy in with them and that was why she said she couldn’t feel the presence of the Holy Spirit in there. She could feel it in prayer and preparing for her sermon but when it came time to preach she said it was like there was a heaviness upon her and she had trouble just getting through the service.

I had never felt anything when I had visited but I tend to shut off my feelings so I am not bombarded by things day to day. Since I am used to closing off my feelings day to day I hadn’t felt anything and I thought there might be some residual negative energy there from a family with a bad attitude maybe some generational stuff and just some “bad vibes.” But I had written a prayer naming who I thought the chief actor was. And prepared by a ritual bath, prayer, and meditation, and blessing of my accoutrements and garments. When I got to the church I entered and stood in the foyer and opened my awareness up. It was like I was hit with a wall of dark energy so powerful and malignant that I staggered backward as if I had just been hit by a wall of wind from a massive storm. My wife steadied me and kept me from falling over, yes, I was literally staggered. With god’s help, I rallied and started reading the prayer I had prepared. As I read my prayer it was difficult and when I came to the part where I named the person I suspected and the forces of darkness my throat closed and I couldn’t speak the words. I could only read part of it invoking God’s presence but not the power phrase that would banish any evil and darkness. I determined to do what I could read as much as I could I began blessing every room, every window, and every doorway. I blessed the pulpit, lectern, and the chancel area especially thoroughly with holy water, incense, and prayer and visualizations. I finally came to an ancient full-length mirror in a children’s Sunday School room I looked into it and immediately felt as if I was falling into it like a vortex, it felt like some sort of portal. I gave it some extra attention and closed it as I had been taught. Anyway, at some point I somehow knew for a fact two things: 1) I could now read the whole prayer, including the banishing commands; and 2) whatever was there in that church and watching me did not know that I was able to complete it. So I kept this information to myself and did not change anything I was doing until I reached what I had determined was a key room for this dark presence and then finished the entire prayer giving the banishing commands in a loud command/drill sergeant voice. Instantly we heard a door slam. We had opened every door in the church and I thought someone had come in and ran out in a huff during the ceremony and prayers. It would have had to have been someone with a key because all the external doors were locked. No one was outside and no one had left the building. We went through looking to see what door had slammed but they were all open and the external access doors were all still locked. But the door slamming was so loud it echoed in the church. Years later I was talking to someone who said, condescendingly, “Yeah, we tend to find what we think we are going to find.” “Yes we do,” I agreed. “But that is not relevant here. EVERYTHING I have ever read and believed said that demons and evil presence cannot stay on holy ground that has been blessed. This was a church and I didn’t think this evil presence could be there. It was absolutely NOT what I was expecting. I expected a vaguely uneasy feeling, not a presence more powerful than I was.” Later, I reflected upon it and realized that in the mainline denominations there are a lot of ministers who say the prayers and go through the ritual but don’t speak with their hearts and emotions in it. So they are just repeating empty words and not actually blessing anything. Prayers from a priest like this are of little use. One pastor came to the aid of a family and prayed for them, apparently thinking it was just psychological and if he went through the motions they would be better. It got worse. He came back and almost through a Bible at them and said “This stuff isn’t real. You need to read your Bible and come to church.” I found that interesting since, if HE read his Bible, he would find that stuff in there. As he would in nearly every other single religion in history if he read their scriptures. An angel destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, another killed all the firstborn of Egypt in a single night. Even fallen and cut off from God the fallen angel or demon would be…something people on their own cant deal with. Fortunately we are not on our own.

Oh, I forgot to mention. One of the neatest things I have seen: the tech guy was setting up the equipment for the above house investigation. One of the things he used was one of those sensors that are used in VR gaming so that you can move and act out in the game. The leader of the investigation was a musician by trade and a song came on the radio he liked. He started dancing in the kitchen, by himself, to the music. The tech guy motioned me over. We looked on the sensor’s screen and you could see a stick figure of the guy dancing. The amazing thing was there were two little kids (presumably the ones who had recently died and were still playing with their toys,) dancing with him. One on either side. It was fascinating to look at the man, dancing alone, and then to look at the screen and see the three dancing together.

After this event, I began to think that I didn’t want to deal with this stuff but also that God had raised me up to deal with this stuff. I was praying to God about it and saying that I am not the best person for this spiritual fight because everything says you must be pure and holy and I was “just me.” In the midst of my prayer time, there was a knock on the door. It was someone I didn’t know but she said, “I don’t know if you remember me but you are my sister’s pastor and I heard you once. This may sound really weird to you but I was praying and God gave me a message for you and he won’t leave me alone until I deliver it. I don’t know what it means but maybe you do.” That was different. “OK, what is the message?” “You need to accept the power that God wants to give you.” When I was twenty-one I had a near-death experience and almost died in an army hospital. The angel told me I could come into heaven if I wanted but that God sent me here for a purpose and I had not yet accomplished my mission. It was up to me whether I returned to Earth or entered the kingdom at that time. I had a parishioner tell me once I had great faith. I said “no I don’t Faith is an assurance of things unseen. I have been to the gates of heaven and seen it. So I cannot claim to have faith. I’m too stubborn and I had to be shown.” This stuff is all very real.

But before you cry ghost or demon you should always try to rule out every single logical explanation that you can think of. My son has always liked ghost hunting shows and I am very critical of them and skeptical. That may seem odd considering my experiences but I think some of the shows are hilarious and fake…a few are not. Some of it is my experience as a counterintelligence agent and security director. I have done over 3000 investigative interviews and have both experience and training in investigation and reading the body language of liars. Sometimes it is apparent in these shows. But I greatly respect Ed and Lorraine Warren as well as the clairvoyant Derek Acorah and the work they did in their life. But, as my pastor friend said, “Fr. @@@@ has told me that out of hundreds of cases in Nebraska the Catholic Church has only acknowledged a few as demonic. We were talking and he didn’t believe in demons except as a psychological construct. I responded, “M., did you hear what you just said? A few ARE demonic.” Please don’t experiment with this stuff. Someone I know brought into their life something I call efreets by experimenting with psychic phenomena and astral travel, they appear as a smokey column with red eyes. The family started all sleeping together because their toddler was terrified. I don’t know that these ARE efreets. That is just the creature of myth that most closely resembles it.) It terrified the family until I got rid of it. At some point, the most logical explanation IS that there are ghosts or demons.

People, please do not try to deal with any of this on your own or treat it like a game. Don’t read this and think, I want to experience stuff like this! These things can scratch you, pummel you, and even hurl you against the wall. And, as some investigators have found out, sometimes, once you get their attention. They focus on you. People I know who have paid for their mistakes.

Pray that you don’t find out this is real. But if you have, I would like to hear about it below in the comments.

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