Commonsense Towards Manipulators

Manipulators want you to think the way THEY want you to think.

When manipulators get you to think the way THEY want, they can make you DO what they want.

Manipulators want power over you for THEIR good...not yours.


Manipulators like you to think you ONLY have two choices.

Manipulators like you to think THEIR way is absolute Good, and the other choice they allow you is totally evil.

When manipulators get you to think this way, it's easy to make you DO what they want.


Reality is that manipulators give us false choices:

that we don't have to accept the choices they give us:

and that we can choose NOT to think the way they want us to.


Above everything else, manipulation is spiritual warfare;

and resisting manipulation is spiritual warfare.

What Heaven Will Be Like

There is a sea of ignorant, sentimental, speculation about what heaven will be like.

I'm as ignorant as everyone else what heaven will be like, and sentimental too. So I speculate:


Yes, you may see your mother in heaven. You may see Abraham Lincoln. You may meet Mother Teresa, or the apostle John, or Moses.

But if you do, the only, overwhelming, cry of your heart will be, "GLORY TO OUR BELOVED GOD !, Who is merciful even to the vilest sinner !"

Evil Ravings of a Brain-Washed Traitor

Obama is not the issue. People are not issues. (Issues are much bigger, and more important.)

Obama has done some things that are good for the country. All Presidents do.

Obama has done some things that are not good for the country. All Presidents do.

Obama is not personally directing every action of government. No President does.

Obama is not personally causing everything bad, or everything good, that happens in America. No President does.

Obama was not born in Kenya.

Obama is not a Muslim.

Obama is an ordinary, flawed, well-intentioned, fallible, human being.


The only thing incredible about these commonsense statements is that millions of people can only perceive them as evil ravings of a brain-washed traitor.

The Poor in Spirit

" 'The baptism of John was from what source, from heaven or from men?” And they began reasoning among themselves, saying, 'If we say, "From heaven," He will say to us, "Then why did you not believe him?" But if we say, "From men," we fear the people; for they all regard John as a prophet.' And answering Jesus, they said, 'We do not know.' He also said to them, 'Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things...Truly I say to you that the tax collectors and prostitutes will get into the kingdom of God before you. For John came to you in the way of righteousness and you did not believe him; but the tax collectors and prostitutes did believe him; and you, seeing this, did not even feel remorse afterward so as to believe him.' " (Matthew 21:25-27, 31b-32)


The second day of His final Passover in Jerusalem, Jesus came to the Temple-grounds, where worshippers from throughout Judea and the diaspora were gathering. Amidst the tens of thousands with their sacrificial animals, the loud praying of the crowds and bleating sheep being slaughtered, the "chief priests and elders of the people" sought Jesus out and challenged His authority.

These were not men who did the ordinary work of the Temple; not the workaday priests continually slitting animals' throats and splattering their blood on the altar, or those who chanted psalms to the dusty, noisy crowds. Jesus' challengers were men of the wealthy, politically-connected establishment from whose families every High Priest was selected: the Bushs, Kennedys and Rockefellers of Judaism.

Jesus expertly challenged His challengers: could they recognize authority, spiritual authority, when they saw it ?

I'm impressed that the Jewish rulers' referred first to their public-image. They knew any straight answer, either for or against John's ministry, would let them be bested by a rustic trouble-maker, or lose them popular support. To save their public image, they dared not answer.

Jesus pointed out that their dishonesty went deeper than playing to the crowds. Even "afterward," He said: even after seeing that God changed the lives of repentant tax collectors and prostitutes who believed John, even after John's threat to your religious establishment was ended by his murder: you dare not admit you were wrong. To preserve your self-image, you dare not, even now, honestly admit to yourself that John was preaching God's message.

I doubt the chief priests and elders acted any differently than any of us would. What we perceive as ours is hard to give up. The "rich young ruler" was crestfallen when Jesus said, from love for him (Mark 10:21), that he must give up all his riches. The chief priests and elders had even more to lose: wealth, but also status, power, reputation, public esteem and self-esteem.

Those who welcomed God's rule in their lives at John's preaching, had none of these. Pariahs, despised by all who met them, the prostitutes and tax-collectors had no status to forfeit, no power nor wealth, no reputation or self-respect to lose.

Bob Dylan got it right: "When you ain't got nothin', you got nothin' to lose."

God, give us the BLESSING to have nothing to lose !

How to Live in the Kingdom of God

The only way to give reality to confessing Christ is

to love The Truth,

to love The Good,

from an honest heart...

and sincerely repent each time we miss it.


This is how we live in the Kingdom of God.

"Stealing Our Freedom"

All those angry people parroting every N.R.A. and Tea Party talking-point as their own "opinion," and complaining their freedom is being stolen from them... ?

They prove it's true.

Nobody Tells ME What to Do

The first problem of rebellion, the mindset that "nobody tells ME what to do," is that it rejects all authority except its own. The rebel is his own god, with one worshipper.

The second problem of rebellion's "nobody tells ME what to do" is that it's categorically, continually, definitively, EXPERIENTIALLY contrary to reality.

Sold to the highest bidder

Jesus says, "I AM...the truth..." (John 14:6).


Hearts not completely sold on TRUTH will be sold to a clever liar.

But it's amazing that so many sell cheap to any tawdry lie they're offered.

Facebook yet again

Being on facebook has seemed, from the first minute, like standing in a sewer. All the filth and lies, all the manipulators' manufactured opinions they want the unwise to "like" and pass on to all their friends, flow around you continuously. My Christian "friends" are just as much a part of the problem as anyone else: but the problem is infinitely more serious for those who are supposed to be operating in "the mind that is in Christ."

That discouraging fact, and how little my speaking against it lessened the flow, had brought me to the place that I was considering leaving facebook. The thought that's become stronger, however, is that a sewer is the best place to study pathogens. The best place to find what's making people ill, so they can be healed. That thought seems to be from God, and seems to be what He requires for hearing His healing word of prophecy.

Good and Evil: letter to a friend

In a message dated 1/21/2015 12:45:43 P.M. Central Standard Time, xxxxxxxxxxx writes:

-- Unfortunately, we are stuck with the politicians the majority chooses

You've put your finger on the BIGGEST question of all: how is it that "good" people choose to follow evil men and bad principles ?

And of course, when you talk moral issues, "good" and "evil," it's really a spiritual question. It's only about politics to the extent that everything people do is a reflection of the spirit that is in their hearts. (Proverbs 4:23. Not a version I use a lot, but the NIV Reader's
Bible puts this verse really well: "Above everything else, guard your heart. Everything you do comes from it.")

How does the enemy get people who have "the mind that is in Christ" (I Corinthians 2:16, Philippians 2:5) to "like" lies, violence, and hatred ? The same way he always has: manipulate their thinking and operative attitudes (what scripture calls "the heart") to confuse what is good and what is evil. ("God is not the author of confusion"...which tells us who is.)

Politics is the worst possible way to sort out that moral question: but it definitely comes into play in manipulation. It's the essential job-skill of politicians to manipulate people's thinking, to their own advantage. Satan's main tactic of deception is also manipulating people's thinking; so politicians are perfect tools in "spinning" evil ideas as "good." (Which God curses in Isaiah 5:20.)

Christians "hearts" have been manipulated by politicians (but actually by you-know-who) to think (for example) that it's good to "give the
poor the dignity of helping themselves." That it's good to kill your enemy before he can kill you. That it's good to demand your "rights." When Christians' "hearts" operate on these thoughts and attitudes entirely contrary to "the mind of Christ," they will inevitably follow
bad leaders and evil principles. And it becomes questionable if people operating in the enemy's spirit should be called "Christians" at all.

This is pretty much the political (but behind it, the spiritual) state of "the Christian majority" today. It's not a hopeful situation, when God's moral law is that following bad men and evil principles can only ever lead to disaster.

Knowing who they work for, I keep a sharp lookout for manipulators, and speak out against them wherever I find them. It's what Christians'
spiritual warfare comes down to: recognize and resist the enemy. Otherwise we become part of the spiritual problem of "good" people who follow the evil one.

God, against this darkness, convict those who love You to shine all the brighter ! AMEN