You Must be Born Again

 I realize that I take for granted that anyone who could profit from the idea of learning to depend on God alone, the subject of my previous post, would be born again, would already be saved and have the Holy Spirit given by God gto those who have believed on Him for salvation.  Nobody else could possible live that way, so it needs to be said.

And I've had in mind for soe time wriging on the subject of being born again, which needs to be revived as atopic at least now and then because otherwise people who think they are Christians because they go to Church and known something of the Bible and like the Biblical moral teachings and so on but do not have the Spirit of God, will only deceive themselves further.  YOu have to get saved first, you have to get born again first or you can't possible live the Christian life.    Anyone who does not have the Holy Spirit is "none of HIs" says Paul.

But I'm jas so often happens these days, too tired to write a owhole post on this subject.  I just have to get that much said and hope to come back to it soon.  

Learning to depend on God

 I love this kind of story.  Ron Daley, a sixtyfive year old man who lies in Fresno, Califoria, went o a huting trip he planned for half a day, got lost and then stranded and when nobody came to find him after twetnty days he walked for nine hours until he met some hunters who rescued him.   But here's the real sotry.  He's a believer and prayed a lot while he was in that situation.  I thik the first thing we ay wonder is why on earth did the Lotf let him suffer so long, surely he could have rescued him a lot sooner.

But no, first his struck broke down and while he had enough food for a couple of weeks that started runing out too.  When he finally started walkeing he hadn't eaten in almost a week.   Although he'd been praying and praying it wasn't until he was at the end of all his resources that the Lord finally led him to safety.

And that, I believe, is gthe real sotory here.  Another acount of how GBod goes to great extremes sometimes in His efforts to teach us to depend on Him alone instead of on our own resources.  Sure He could have rescued Ron a lot sooner but He didn't do it until Ron was out of, well, everythig.  In fact, it was at the point of exhaustion, after walkeing for hours, that he scalled on the Lord sayig he had no more energy to walk any further and please help me now.  And when he looked up from his prayer, there was the truck with its headlights on just ahead of him o the road.  It was at the exact omet that Ron ran out of absolutely every bit of his own resources, down to the last gasp of his phyiscal energy, that the Lord acted.

So what am I saying?  Well, the Lord engineered this whole drama from beginning to end and the whole point of it was to teach Ron to depend on Him alone instead of on what the Biblce called "th arm of flesh" meaning our human strengths and resources.   It's a lesson the Lord tries to teach all of us but we often hardly notice His acting on our lives for this purpose, some of us never get the message and some of us gett it only late in life, which is a shoe that fits me.  And I still haven't learned it.

It's what Andrew Murray wrote about in his book, Absolute Surrender, it's what all the best Christian writers and teachers present as the problem of learning how to deny ourselves as the LOrd commands us to do, deny yourself, take uip your cross ajnd follow Me.  And if you won't deny yourself "you canot be My disciple."    Give it u, give it ALL usp.  And He gies us time to learn it, but we're awfully obtuse about it, and keep ascriging things to human and worledly causes that are really arranged by the Lord for our good if only we knew how to read the signs.  And een then, alas, even when we sort of get the message, as I have many times over, we still fail the test.  It's a ery hard less to learn.

Happy is Ron Daley if he gets it.

*****

More thoughts on tghe same subject.  

It happens to be a subject I've rebeen reading about a lot over the last few weeks, so of course the timing is great for this story to appear in the news when I'm able to make this connection.   As I said it'as a ery hard lesson to learn.  I'm disappointed in myslef at how obious it is what the Lord has done from time timo time throughout my life and I fought Him because I didn't see His hand at work in it, and even after I knew intellectually that this is how He works in our lives I still didn't see it until after the fact, and I still don't know if I've learned very a small gbit of the practical lessons H wants me to learn.  I'm grateful that hHe's given me a long life and tht He might continue it for a while longer so maybe I still have a chance to learn it.  

As my reasding has been making clear this is a very important lesson to learn because the Lord can't work with our fleshly soulish strengths, He wants to work with the renewed Spirit He has put within us and that has to become the power we must learn to edepend on and learn to put our own strengths aside.  I know this theortetically far better than I know it in any practical sense at all, alsas, alas.   

fThe letter kills, but the spirit is life.  Adam was a living souls but Christ a life giving Spirit.  Walik by the Spirit and you will not fulfill the lusts of the flesh,.   He who would sae his soul will lose it, but he who would die for My sake will lie to eternal life.  I'm getting the words wrong but I think I got the gist of it.  

Watchman Nee's book, The Release of the SPirit, is oje of my current sources for this teaching.  For the Lord to be able to use us for His own work, to do His will, we must give up our own will, our own ideas, our own methods, and wait entirely on Him for the guidance and the strength to do what He wants us to do.  Often our Spoirit is "buried" beneath our flesh and we must learn to release it for it to become useful to us for the Lord's purposes.  

I think it helps a lot if ewe at least grasp that giving up our own ways is something we should do  even if we keep failing to actually do it.  At least we have the right idea, which is a lot better than the usual habitual way of living where we just do whatever we want to do or what we thing is right.  

I't s a very hard lesson to learn.  I ope the Lord will make me learn it because I reall y do want to be useful for His kingsomdom.  The world wo so desperately needs spiritually guided CHristians right now.  If we just do what we thihk makes sense we won't really accomplish the spiritual blessings this world needs, at best we might teach a few truths, but god wants to be able to use us in spiritual power to effedt real lasting change in this benighted world.  

Again, I really do hope Ron Daley gets even a smidgen of the message I think is written all over his harrowing experience lost in the woods.  Wrecked truck,  No cell phone service.  Heavy snow adds to the idifficulties.  Running out of food and finally runs completely out.  Rationinst it nut by nut finally before it runs out.  Finally the Lord tells him to start walking, but He doesn't help him until he's finally so exhausted he can't walk another step an prays accordingly.   The Lord takes anway everything before He gives us the spiritual resources He wants us to have.  

Die to self.  Take up your cross.  Deny yourself.  Lose hyour life for His sake and you will gain it for eternity.  Lose, give up , die,  that's the message of the cross we all need to learn and so few of us learn it, just fight it all the time in favor of self preservation which seenms so natural to us, well, it IS natural to us, it's the natural that has to go if the spiritual is to thrive.  

May I get it.

And again, if Ron Daley gets it even a little, blessed is he.

No Kings insanity but ot happy with Trump poop panne either

 Late getting to this but it's perennial so not too big a deal.  I'm not happy with trump's so called meme flying the plane above a crowd of No Kings protestors and dumping blogs of I guess poop on them.  Q We don't need this level of response, we need a little dignity here.  Leave the barbarism to them, they are so good at it.  And I'm not happy with Trup's use of the F word either.  Time to pull badk on that kind of things in my opiion.  

But of course No Kings is gruly insane, the product of years of propaganda,all lies, and although there are clearly a lot of ordinary everyday liberals drawn into it, it's no doubt primarily fundaed and organized by Soros and his tribe.   

I get tired of turning on any media outlet and hearing mostly anti Trump opinios.  I guess the liberals don't notice but I certainly tdo.  We are already living in a society run by autocrats, and they are on the left.  They are the lones who have been cancelling us conservatives for a long time now, getting us booted off social media for so calledf Misinformation when it's just personal opinion and often the truest dstatement out there.   They are the fascistsa  as usual trying to get the labnel to stick to the other side.  This isn't America but they use all the rhtetoric and confuse people.  Trump is no king, far from it, he was elected and he is hampered at every turn by leftist neverending lawswuits or whatnot, most of which turn out to be illegal in themesleves, but they have to be waited out.  If Trump erwere a king they wouldn't be waited out, he'd just give orders no mater what, but gthe left doesn't think at all about anything, they kjust emote.

Saw this poor lady in her seventies being interviewed at a No Kings protest, weeping copiously about how scared she is with Trump in orroice although nothing was said about exactly what it was that was scaring here.  It's scary to me that this sort of emotion is stirred out by lies and we on the right have just about no way to answe her.  The Left have managed to block our public presence whenever they like so we can't be heard.  I'd like to reassure that woman that she'sl suffering from propaganda, and that she has nothihng to b scared of except the people who have lied to her.  Trump is working hard to tdo her and all the rest of us some reas dl good after years of leftist destruction of the nation at every level.   She'll never see my blog and even wif I weren't lehgally blidnd I don't know how I'd get a message to her to calm her down.  She's a victim, she's a pawn, it's sad.She doesn't uhnderstand how any one could have  voted for this person, she weeps.  Well, if we had any access to her wqe could explain it to her but swe don't.   If she only tunes in the propagandists she'll only continue to be scared for o good reason.    We are living in evil times and the evil is all coming from one direction, stifling the voice of truth and goodness and WEmrican patrioticsm, while even pretending all that is on their side.  It's truly diabolical.  

And of course they blame tTrump for the government shut down although it's the Demotcrats who have voted for it every time the vote is called, and the Republicans vote to reopen.  They want to blackamail Trump into giving up his hard won policies in previous legislateion.  I hope he doesn't given in.  He's trying to provide funds to help those hurt by the shut down too but that is also hampered in various ways.

Prayer is the sonly solution.  All this is beyond us mere human beings, beyhond [olitical solutions, God is going to have to change things and that could happen if huge number sof us pray for it.

asOME OF MY USUAL RUMINATIONS ABOUT GEOLOGY AND BIOLOGY

 Tthere is evidence, which I've shown many times efore, that there was no tectonic distubance before or during the Flood, but only after all the strata were laid down, which would have to have been during the Flood.    Just to remind myself of this if nothing else.

I still cannot fathom how anyone thinks any of the strata were laid down by any other means under any other circumstances than the GFlood.  Yeah, but I'm just an ighnoramus I guess.

ND, JUST TO BE A REAL PAIN IN THE NECK i'LL ADD THAT i DON'T THINK nATURAL sELECTION HAS MUCH TO DO WITH THE FORMATION OF NEW POPULATION PHENOTYPES, i THINK IT'S FAR AND AWAY ALMOST ALWAYS THE RESULT OF SIMPLE GEOGRAPHIC ISOLATION OR REPRODUCTIVE ISOLATION, WHICH IBNN ITS OWN WAY IS A FORM OF SELEDCTION, BASED ON THE MIGRATION OF SOME SMALLISH PORTION OF A LARGER POPULATION  WHICH BREEDS TOGETHER OVER A NIMBER OF GENERATIONS TO BRING OUT THE CHARACTERISTICS AVAILABLE FROM THE MIXTING OF THE NEW GENE FREQUENCISES OF THE FOUNDING POPULATION.  pOD mRCARU LIZARDS.

yEAH i'M A DOPE.

nd I still like my little insight into how the camel Kind prolduced the llama, but of course that REALLY makes me a dope.

I must be having a bad day.  I think I'll go get a mug of tea.

TGhe Charlie Kirk Effect

 A lefty recently described to me the Charlie Kirk reactoion on the right as "hayateria."  What is it about the left that theyu think they know why people o the right do what we do?  they think they can read trump's mind, and of course it's always something sleazy like he's just looking for some kind of political advantage.  None of us are sincere at all according to them, based on nothing whatever, just their own ideologically cramped definitions of everything.   

The Charlie Kirk phenomenon is something truly unusual and unexpected, no hysteria.  A lot of us have been amazed to find out how deeply it afected us, all of us from those who hardly knew him or much about him to thosre who knew him well,  all have been surprised at the depth of the feeling that followed his death.   And the changes in people, the great numbers who started reassing differently because of hi, who started going to church, who made resolutions to live a better life, or even just some of us who realized we can't let thie politilcal situation continue unchallenged as we so often do,, we have to do SOMETHING, maybe even start a fight with a enightbor, not that a fight is what we have in mind at first, we just don't want to keep covering up our politilcal opinions for the ssake of peace and qujiet because all that means is that the left goes on acting on their violent murderous slanderous delusions without resistance.

Political Mayhem

 The pundit ith the phd offers her opinion that the conditions do not apply for applying the insurrection act as Trump wants to do, since she of course knows SO much better than Trump or anybody else whether they apply or not, he and all his advosors just a bunch of fools.    We aren't going to hear anything different from this from the left on this subject and since just about all anyone hears comes from the left on any subject whatever, thanks to the media blackout against all conservative voices, her opinion, utterly illegitimate as it is, is going to prevail in the public mind.

Looks to me like the conditios are right for it, and surely y opinion counts too in this weird  atmosphere.

According to Mark Levin the Insurrection Act has been used by quite a few Presidents starting with Thomas Jerrfrson, and Trump's use of it would be in the same kind of situation, riotoing that is not being handled by the local authorities.  Handled effectively.  So that mobs are running wild beating people up and burning things down and notghing is stopping them.  LOokis like a situation calling for federal intervention to me.  If the lady above mentioned prevails, the city will just burn to the ground while the governors and majors sayin  say no it's all just a protest within bounds and they are handling just fine thank you ver much.   We can see from our own news sources that's a lie, but of focoudlre the Left only sees thwhat the dominant media tell them, all leftiwing propaganda.   Rachel Maddow had on the Govetrnor of Ordgon reently who said there is no need for any help from the governmetn while we on the right had been hearing for some time about how it was out of control, wven hearing it from Portland residents who want Trump to intervenee.  But nowo, Maddow just let the governor's lies prevail.   Of course.  Why is sometimes hard to fathom.  They WNT  the city to burn to the ground?  Sure seems that way.

For a long time I've believed it should be possible to talk through the differences between right and left, even though it  comes to rancoorous shouting matches and loss of freidships if necessary, because I'm so aware of how little the let knows about all the things we know.  They think it's equal on bitoth sides but it isn't.  They are in the dark about just about all of it because they are fed lies they don't bother to investigate.  even when they are pointed out to them they sometimes just blow them off, somethig i discovered recently which rather flummoxed me.  

For instance, although the poit was made that the image of Trump peurveyed b the media that he had mocked a man for  his disability was disproved by the display of many other situation sin which he'd mocked others in eaxactlyu the same way who weren't disabled, the facct that this exposed the media manipulation to create a false impession of trump mattered not at all to some people.  It proves beyond a doubt that Trump was not mocking a man for his disabilitry, whioch is what the whole thing was about but golly gosh, they don't care because they don't like the meway Trup did th emocking, no matter who was the target of it.  So the main point is just buried under a pile of  stupid irrelevancies.  It matters not what what Maryl Streep said at the Acadmy aards a few years ago was false, matters not one whit, matters not at all that the media lie to create a false impression of Trump, matters not at all, because  they can glaean a nasty inpresion of him anyway from the truth just as well as the faslehood.   

This sort of mental muddling could drive me to ...  I dunno, a heart attack maybe.  I don't know how anyoe can uncritically think this way.  I don't.    

Oh and  it's supposed to be the definitive answer to those of us who have reason to think sone of the protests we hear about  have been organized and paid for, by point ing out that ordinary people join in such protests and THEY don't get paid.  Again, what is the matter with people's minds these days?  WHAT IS THE MATTER?  

I keep feeling I need to explain the truth about the above two examples for the benefit of those whose minds are so muddled but I just can't  get myself to do it.

Golly gosh, Trump is just a dictator and a fascist and a Nazi and a white supremacist and and and and  so are all we who voted for him, tnhat that's all there is to that I guess.  That in fact he is acting as President according to the Constittuional definition of his responsibilities is buried under a mountsinan of Trump Derangement Syndrome,  all emotion, not reasonableness anywhere.

Oh, and I was also assured that although it may not be clear whether I would fight for the right of a leftist to speak his mind, certainly they on the left would fight for my right.  About my defending the leftist, I guess I'd have to be in the situatio because soe of that jthey say is nothing short of treasonalous in my mind.  But anyway, as for their assurance that they would defend my right, given the experience we on the right have had over the last ten years and more of being cancelled on social media I'm not so sure they know what they are talkintg about.  For one thing they don't even know we hav been experiencing such a thing as that rampant cancellation.  I guesss we're all just folo.s again, just wrought up hallucinators or whatever to think such things are happening to us.  I was salogythmically cut off from an audience years ago but that must be my imagination, you know ho w things can get all confused on the iterenet and so on, and my two first posts were unceremoniously delectted from Facebook overniight and that too was just not believed.   I'd put up those posts as a test and my suspicion was correct that Facebook wasn't going to tolerate my view of whatever it was, maybe the COVID treatment wars or somethig ike that?   One lefty did inform tme that I shoudl understand that misinformation could hurt people and that's why some posts are delected.  Golly godsh ya don't say.  Some unknnown uninformed lefty social media employee has the authority to decide whether scientific information is misinofrmation and that's all it takes.  Golly gosh.  What a world we llive in.

Need to add that although treasonaous is the word that came to mind for somethig a letist might say , I shoould have said something inciting violence or even murder, becauase there is certainly a lo tof that I would have a lot of trouble defending their right to say such things.

Later:   Add slander to the ist of speech issues I expect to hear from the left that I would have trouble defending.  There are, after all, categories of speech the framers neer intended to protect with that smendment and the Left is particularly fond of most of that type.  

I also want to add to the bit about being cancelled for " misinformation" which is a black joke if you ask jme,  that not only are those who do the cancelling utterly unqualified to make such decisions, but on a site where ordinary people gather to offer personal onions the idea that any message short of something inciting violence or the like should be censored by the site is out of bounds by traditional American standards.  Of course since they are a business they can put out warnings to one knows what is allowed and what is't, and anyone with undesirable politial opinions can just stay away.  because it is all political tre is no misinformation invovlmved, they jyust don't want to let certain aideas have an audience because they conflict with their own.  Simple.

And I didn't really get said how I used to think it possible and necessary to try to talk things through becteween left and right, even if it had to lead to hard feelings, because it's the only way we have a chance of getting across the necessary information, which otheriwise is censored by the leftist media and social media gatekeepers.   Even if we have to expect some shouting matchjes from time to time eventually surely the actual facts would emerge and both sie s could take them into account.  Seems riht to me still, in the abstract.   but as I go on to say, it probably isn't going to work out that way in reality, as I recently found out.  Not only do we inhabit different universes because they are deprived of information, but they are dug into their information so ddeply they willl say absurd and crazy things to defend it.  I suppose I still hold to some hope discussion , even shouting matches at times, could lead to the truth, but that hope has been getting smaller.

antichrist system lying sigsn and wonders

 Qhile listening to the book, Dominion, How the Christian revolution RemaDE THE woRLD, BY tOM hOLLAND, A FEW MONTHS AGO, i WAS REMINDED OF THE MIRACLES THAT cATHOLIC SAINTS ARE SUPPOSED TO BE ABLE TO SHOW IN ORDER TO QUALIFY FOR  THAT STATUS.  hOLAND DOESN'T SAY UCH ABOUT THE cATHOLIC cHURCH AS SUCH, SO WHEN HE MENTIONS THESE SO CALLED SAINTS NOW AND THEN HE APPEARS TO BE THINKING OF THEM SIMPLY AS A cHRISTIAN THING, NOT SPECIFICALLY A cATHOLIC THING, IF HE MAKES ANY DISTINCTION AT ALL.

uNFORTUNATELY MY MMEMORY IS PRETTY BAD THESE DAYS AND i DON'T REMEMBER THE SPECFIC IDEA THAT LED KME IN THIS DIRECTION, BUT IT OCURRED TO ME THAT THE MIRALCES PERFORMED BY THESE "SAINTS" ARE PROBABLY WHAT wATCHMAN nEE IN HIS GOOK thE lATENT pOWER OF THE sOUL, IDENTIFIES AS sOUL pOWER, RATER THAN GENUINE MIRACLES THAT COME FROM goD.  iT WAS SOME WAY THEY WERE DESCRIBED IN hOLLAND'S BOOK THAT MADE ME THINK ALONG THESE LINES, AND THAT IS UNFORTUNATELY THE THING i CAN'T REMEMBER. tHIS KIND OF PROBLEM IS PARTICULARLY HARD FOR ME BECAUSE i CAN'T SEE TO JUST GO TO THE BOOK ITSELF AND LOOK UP REMFERENCES TO THE IRACLES OF SAINTS.   

i'VE LISTENED TO nEE'S BOOKS, THE lATENT pOWER OF THE sOUL    drat, the caps lock was on, sorry.    and The Release of the Spirit, at least twice since then.  These are hard lessons to understand, let alone learn to live by, and my memory problems make ammany listenings necessary anyway.    Nee's books, particularly the oe about soul power, evoke the Hindu category of Siddhis, or attainments or powers that some adepts can reach.  Neew says soul powers are cultivated in all the religious practices that aim to suppress the body and liberate the soul, which include asceticisms and medictations and varieties of both.  The siddhis can be released by those who practice these things most energetically I gather.  

I just ow looked up Siddhis on You Tube and found a program called Enlightenment Today where a man explains the siddhis, and they are very much what the Catholic saints could do.

I should have mentionsd before that I just finished another audible book, They FLew, by historian Carlos Eire, which is his rather obsessive puruist of information about the particularly  particular power or siddhi of levittion.  That is one of the siddhis mentioned by the guy in the video I just saw.  For some reason it caught Eire's interest and most of his book focuses on reports of this particular power as practiced by Catholic mystics mostly in the sixteenth ad seventteenth centuries.   Bilocation is another such power they  some of them also exhibited though more rarely.  Levitation was fairly common it turns out, and in fact that one is often used as the miracle that qualifies a mystic for sainthood according to the Catholic system.  

Nee doesn't mention Levitation for some reason, which is rfrustrating at this point, but he oes mention bilocation or the phenomenon of a person's being in two places at the same time, where he or she is able to interact with people in both places, and with the physical environment.  Sometimes the person is in a trance at the original location, but in some accounts is conscious in both places.

Eire's book has some very specific descriptions of levitation events.  The body seems to be utterly insaensate during the event, sometimes cdescribed as light as a feather so that it could be blown around easily by people nearby, but also nearly impossible to pull back to earth, even when many people exerted themselves in the effort.   Eire mentions that often these people who levitated  also had other abilities such as telephaathy or the ability to read the minds of other people, bilocation, already mentioned,  the ability to see hear and feel thihjngs at a distance, the ability to know future events and so aon.  All these things are mentioned by the Enlightenment guy in the previous ly mentioned video.   So it is certainly fair to cal all these things Siddhis though that is a Hindu ter for them, and Nee's term is Soul Powers.

It is very clear in Eire's accounts that these powers are released by the extreme ascetic practices engaged in by these Catholic mytics, often extreme fasting or food deprivtion, the wearing of hari shirts, which are garmed made of goat's hair that are veryu  irritating to the skin, metal objects wornsn next to the body where they can cause pain , chains on the body, sleeping on hard surfaces, in some cases on a wooden cross without softening materials.   As Nee says, suppresing the body is one of the ways the soul powers can be released and although that doesn't seem to be at all the aim of these pracitces in the Catholic context, clearly it is the method that does lead to their release.  The mystics are seeking deeper experiences of God, not powers of any kind.  THere are some frauds, which Eire' also reports, but most of them sounds quite legitimate.    They are trying to mortify the flesh and its sins to become worthy to be in God's preence or some such idea.  But in so doing they are inadvertently releasing allthes soul powers that Nee says are hidden in the bodies of all human beoiings ever since the Fall of Adam and Eve.

In the Easetn religions where the term siddhis is used, the aim is toward enlightenment, and ascetic practices are apparently prat of that practice, if I understood him correctly,  Unless the asceticism is for the purpose of liberating siddhis, which are not always desired by a particular discipline but are by some.    In themselves they have no particular alue, not in any of the religious contexts, not towsrd enilightenment, or toward closeness to God.  In a sense they could be said to get in the way of those ultimate aims, but in the Eastern context apparently they are vluled as part of the spiritual journey in some of the religious systems.

My interest has been to try to understand what things are of God and what are not, as Nee makes it very clear that the soul powers are definitely not of God and are to be avoided.   So now that I've become convinced that these miracles of the Catholic saints are indeed the same thing as the soul powers and the siddhis Ihave to at least tentatively say they are not of God.  Which in some cAAE  Qhixh in aomw xAWA IA  painful becuase the people are so clearly trying to daraw near to god whom they appear to love genuinely, or at least they love what they think is God and since they are draw to what we know top be genuinely attributes of God I have to say that to that extent they are genuinely seeking God himself.  At that is painful if I have to realize that they are failing mightily in their  aim and only releasing a power of their own souls that does not come from God.I feel very sorry for them.  They are misled by their religion.  Which is how I think of Catholics in general anyway, but it hurts when you see epopel so isincerely trying to find God on all the wrong paths.

Asceticism is already a clue that they are not on the right path as scripture itself tells us that won't accomplish anything wheer in the CHristian life.  Then when it ceoms clear that the so called Virgin Mary has a big part in all these thigns for most of them I ust want to bury my head in d crayy.  How sad.  Mary is way too big a part of many of these people's experiences.  urely the deil is guiding all these things and leading them all to disaster.   

So the very evidences the Roman church uses to determine if a particular mystic deserves sainthood are  actually evidences that they aren't anywhere near the mos basic level of relationship with God.    I noticed over and over that nowhere is the gospel as Protestants understand it mentioned at all in the accounts of these levitating and bilocating mystics.  Jesus is called the redeemer, all too often co redeemer which his mother, oh unholy fact,  but what exactly one does to get recdeemed is not mentioned anywhere.  

It looks to me like these soul powers are probably the Lying Wonders JwuJesus says will be on display at the very end just before He returns.  It's interest ing to me that al lthe things , or I guess I should't say ALL, but many, of the things we are to expence of the very last days are to be seen in the thoudsand year reign of the Catholid Church through the MIddle Ages, the so called Holy Roman Empire.  The Anitchrist, who is the Pope, was revealed when the Bishop of Rome took on the role of Universal Bishop back in the seventh century, though the futurist end times system of teoday says he won't be relevealsed until afte rthe true Church is raptured.  Not so,   He's been in plain sight for over a thousand years, and recognized in may writings by many true Christians outside the Roan arena down the centuries as the Antichrist.  The Reforemers were belated joiners of that group.   

They've disissed the idea that the Pope is the Antichrist and I'm afraid that is a big big isake.  There are other clues to the end times system that have also been fulfilled in the Medieval Catholic CHurch, such as the making of all those martyrs through the Inquisitions, those martyrs we see in the Book of Revelation, and the Lying Signs and wonders too, it seems to me now, as the supposed miracles claimed by the Romean shucrch have been there all along and are not just something to be brought into play at the very end, though perhaps those and all the rest of it wil be an extra intense version of all of it.

Also I realized thathe Antichrist iais also worshipped.  You'd think maybe that would wait until the end, but if you think about the throng that gatherwed in St Pet'ers square to see the anouncement of the new Pope a couple of moths ago , many praying, using their pagan rosary beands and so on, you have to call that worship.

I cringe when I hear Cathaolis recite the Lord's prayer or the Hail Mary and call those things praying, and I especially cringe when they come to that last line that asks Mary to pray for us sinners, as if she could hear prays by millions of people just as god can, and answer them.  tghe prayer to be prayed for.  It's still a prayer, it's making Mary into God.   I swish I could jolt a few of them out of their delusion.

It's a hard delusion to bereak because so many of them asre such nice people, ice patriotic Americans, kind people etc etc etc.  And they enjoy their community life among their fellow Catholics.  Hard delusion to reak indeed.

But Lord, please save many of them.