It May Be Too Late But We Have to Try

 This is an extra post on the teaching I linked in the last one, Reformation History, Eschatology, WWII etc., because the churches so desperately need to know these things about the RCC that have so effectively been kept from us for at least a century.  My little blog can't reach anybody but I've got to write it here anyway and pray that God will spread it from whatever sources are available..  

https://www.sermonaudio.com/saplayer/playpopup.asp?SID=530111153203

Listen to the laws the RCC has in place that affect INDIVIDUALS, ALL OF US, everywhere, even in the United States where our own laws protect us from the kinds of encroachments on our liberty they intend to enforce when they get the power to do it.  And they already have a lot more power than we imagine, through their Concordats with various nations.  Even the US thanks to Reagan has diplomatic relations with the Vatican although they had been put to a stop because of their support of the Confederacy in the Civil War.  Reagan reinstated this relationship.  

Listen and weep, that's all I can say.  And besides weeping it may turn your stomach as it did mine to hear the power they already have over us, YOU AND ME.

American Christians are such a complacent bunch.  The wolves in sheeps' clothing are circulating among us and ready to pounce and we blithely accept them as sheep.  Listen to this talk please.  At least this one.  It's not really new to me I'm sorry to report, I just gave up on trying to talk about it and let it slip out of my mind.  You havew no idea, you have no idea, you have no idea.  

Lord please please give us revival, bring us back to the Reformation solas in all their power, and correct the many secondary deviations that have been crippling even the good churches so that You can bless us with a real outpouring of Your spirit before all this comes crashing down on this world.  Please grant us the knowledge we've been deprived of, and the zeal to change, and the repentance we need so that You will send us Your Spirit in power.  Please..  

European Union Shaping up as the Revived Holy Roman Empire and some Eschatological Implications of the Pope as Antichrist

 Window on Europe  is the title of a broadcast at Sermon Audio by Richard Bennett in 2003:  

In the first 25 minutes he talks about his personal experiences traveling in Europe with other evangelicals.  From 25 on he talks about the European Union, starting with its new Constitution,, bringing out its Catholic character, which was overtly recognized by the former Pope John, whom he quotes.  European Bible believers/ Protestants are worried about how this is shaping up because of course if the RCC ascends to its former power over the Holy Roman Empire of Europe, which it is believed is what is developing rapidly, they will be persecuted as they were throughout the Middle Ages.  Already the terms of the new Constitution are clearly totalitarian, far from incorporating the great liberalizations of European history.   The Vatican would wield both religious and civil power.

https://www.sermonaudio.com/sermoninfo.asp?SID=117182031410

In other broadcast, this one in 2009, Papal Rome, The European Union, Antichrist, Prophecy, Jesuits  Pope John Paul is said to be preparing to be the Holy Rroman Emperor ruling over Europe from the Urals to the Atlantic.  \

Then there is  Reformation History, Eschatology, Prophecy, WWII, Facts About the Papacy (Antichrist) by Bennett and a guest speaker.  

https://www.sermonaudio.com/saplayer/playpopup.asp?SID=530111153203

It is not so much about Reformation History as Counterreformation history, meaning the work of the Jesuits in their neverending attempts to undo the Reformation, which include becoming teachers in Protestant colleges and tutors in royal families, where by interpreting everything through a Catholic lens they are able tu undermine the Protestant beliefs of the parents of the children in their charge.   The Jesuits have a reputation for being excellent scholars and teachers, so Protestant parents naively send their children to be educated under them, only to find them converting to Catholicism or just having their thinking so changed they no longer share their parents' belief.  

From there they go on to how it was the Catholic Oxford Movement in England that promoted the futurist eschatology that removed the idea of the Pope as Antichrist in modern thinking.  It is certainly true that most modern eschatology has dropped that Reformation understanding completely, now teaching an Antichrist who is to come who is as yet unknown but is expected to be revealed and to emerge into world prominence during the Tribulation period.  This is really a sad development, along with all the other ways the RCC has been getting a pass from evangelicalism in recent years. 

Also discussed in this audio sermon is the Vatican's involvement in Catholic nations during WW((, with Mussolini and Hitler and Franco and Salazar and Pavlik(?) in Croatia, supporting the persecutions and murders of nonCatholics.  In Croatia 700.000 Serbian Greek Orthodox believers were murdered.  So although the Inquisition is no longer in force its practices continue anyway, and if the global political situation continues in the current direction it will no doubt be openly reinstated.  It's been renamed, by the way, from The Office of the Inquisition, to The Congregation for the Doctrines of the Faith.  (I hope I got that right, my memory is good for about five minutes these days.) 

We definitely need a massive return among evangelical churches to the truths of the Reformation and the kowledge that it is the papacy scripture identifies as the Antichrist.  Bennett freequently mentions how we need revival in the churches based on a return to fundamental Protestant principles, especially the Protestant Gospel of salvation by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone.

So far I haven't seen a complete eschatological system attempted by Bennett or others who recognize the Pope as the Antichrist.  Bennett objects to the futurist interpretation of the Antichrist but doesn't address other elements of futurist eschatology.  I don't recall if Chris Pinto does but I don't think so.  I think the general idea is that we have to do away with the whole system of thought  because the papacy is the Antichrist.

But as I've been arguing, there are certainly strong reasons to view the Book of Revelation in particular as describing future events.  The Antichrist most certainly IS to be a Pope, that Antichrist we see in the Book of Revelation, leader of the Harlot Church which is also clearly the Roman Church.  This figure will have civil and religious powers, WHICH THE PAPACY HAD THROUGH THE MIDDLE AGES over the Holy Roman Empire.  A Pope is the perfect fit.  Most of the necessary framework is already in place, and the European Union is shaping up only too well to fit right into the papal ambitions.  As I mention above, the Pope would function as Emperor over the revived Holy Roman Empire, pretty much the position he held during the Middle Ages.   After the Roman Empire fell and the Caesars were out of the way, then the Bishop of Rome ascended to essentially the position of Emperior.  They invented a document called "The Donation of Constantine" to take civil power to the papacy.  

In 1798 Napoleon took that civil power away from the Pope, which is understood to fulfill the biblical prophecy of the wound described in Revelation, that was healed, and it was healed in 1929 when Mussolini restored civil power to the papacy.   All they need now is for the European Union to fall into line under the Pope's rule and from what Bennett has been saying in these talks I'm linking, that's well underway.

SO the way I am now looking at all this, the Rapture is still future and most likely shown in Revelation 4, and the Tribulation period is also future, a seven-year period of the outpouring of God's wrath known throughout the Old Tstament as the Day of the LORD.  Paul reassures the Thessalonian Church that the Day of the LORD had not yet come, which had been rumored among them, and that it can't come until the Man of Sin be revealed, who can't be revealed until an unnamed Restrainer is out of the way.  Because of his cautious way of talking about this Restrainer it seems pretty clear he is talking about a temporal power that could punish him and the churches, which makes Caesar the Restrainer since there were no more Caesars when the empire moved to Byzantium.  So the Antichrist was revealed centuries before the Reformation, and even more centuries before our time, probably in 606 AD when the Byzantine emperor resxolved a dispute among the four Bishops of the Day by making the Bishop of Rome Universal Bishop.

So Paul says the Day of the LORD won't come until the Man of Sin is revealed.  If he was revealed in the 7th century then that Day could have come any time afterward, but clearly it hasn't.  It is yet future, it fits Jesus' description of great tribultion that God would have to shorten or nobody would survive it, and it fits the Seventieth Week of Daniel that is also as yet unfulfilled.  

It does seem to me that the arguments for a Pre-Tribulation Rapture are pretty solid, the many promises the LORD makes to the Church that we will not go through God's wrath, and the fact that the Church is not mentioned or even hinted at during the Tribulation period when the seals are opened and God's judgments are poured out.  Tribulation in the sense of persecution the Church endures, but not the wrath of God.  So that part of Pre=Trib eschatology remains intact in my mind

BUT I do have one unresolved question and that is how to think about the martyrs under the altar in Revelation 6 when the fifth seal is opened.  That is, there were tens of millions of martyrs under the papacy during the 600 years of their persecutions of "heretics," and I find it hard to separate those from some future group of martyrs during the Tribulation.  I suppose if I can accept the idea of two different sets of believers anyway, why not two different sets of martyrs?  But it nevertheless remains a question, and one that could potentially undo the whole Pre-Trib point of view.

Rampaging Evil and Questions about the End Game.

 Evil is winning.  Sometimes it overwhelms me, in fact I don't know how I manage any hope for the world at all, must be delusional if I do.  Did you know that Antifa trains in Syria with Islamic terrorists?  Chris Pinto is the source of that kind of information.  No wonder I stopped listening to him for so long, I always cry my eyes out after hearing one of his radio shows.  How can it be that the people of God who have a direct conduit to the omnipotent Power, are so helpless these days?  How did we get into this situation where so many churches aren't preaching the true gospel and we can't even get prayer for revival organized to any effect?  

Pinto's show today is titled "For Such a Time as This," which evokes the theme of the Book of Esther.  The problem is it suggests that we HAVE some kind of provision today for such as this time we are living through and we don't.  He makes a good point that Esthe, who is often understood to represent the Church, was not called to preach the gospel as so many think should be the exclusive engagement of the churches, she was called to save her people from an evil murdering man.  She was able to prevail upon the king and the evil was put down.  What resources do we have for dealing with today's evil when the Church has been so weakened and fragmented?\

I also listened to his show of a couple months ago, "The Curse of Liberalism."   That one makes me sad for the many nice liberals out there who have no clue what they are actually serving.  The powers of evil have certainly done their job at depriving us of the necessary knowledge to counter such an influence, knowledge of history, knowledge of the forces arrayed against us.  Pinto is very good at penetrating even beyond the level of Marxism and Communism to the influence of the Vatican and the Jesuits, an influence so effectively camouflaged nobody would suspect it these days, though even just a hundred years ago there were many who kept the knowledge alive and sounded the alarm from time to time.   What would anyone care who was not a Protestant though?  The few Protestants who are at all aware of it, and that is certainly very few.   The knowledge of the Protestant foundations of America is thoroughly discredited by these very influences that need to be exposed.  

Nice liberals have no clue.  They actually think their nice compassionate motives are the only good and the other side is Hitler, or that there is a Right and a Left and a pendulum that swings between them, when the reality is in our time that there is only good versus evil and the good is not liberalism and the good is hamstrung.

Well, it does no good to sit here and cry about it.   I can pray but we need an army praying.   I can write too, but to what purpose?

Both Chris Pinto and Richard Bennett object to the Pre-Tribulation Rapture scenario.  Pinto mentioned  that he objects to the timing of the Rapture but I couldn't find a discussion of his reasoning about it.  I suppose it's that he thinks the Rapture doesn't occur until Christ returns but I'm not sure.  John MacArthur did a fine job of arguing that one down.

It took me a long time to come around to the Pre-Trib point of view and I still find it persuasive, although at least its understanding of the Antichrist is historically ignorant.  Much of the portrait in the Book of Revelation surely refers to thei historical Roman Church as THE Antichrist force in the world since Christ came.  That can't refer only to a seven-year period of revived Inquisition.  And that raises a question about the martyrs under the altar whose voices are heard when the fifth seal is opened in Revelation 6.  If the Church is in heaven then all martyrs before the Day of the LORD would have been Raptured as part of the Church, tens of millions of them.  Why would there be a separate class of martyrs at the hand of the same evil entity that are murdered only during the Tribulation period?  Could the martyrs already in Heaven still be crying out for God's justice.  I guess that's a possibility but it's not terribly convincing. 

Although I still find the general outline of the Pre-Trib position to be persuasive, such questions do suggest another take on it.  What's most compelling is the fact that the Day of the LORD prophesied in scripture is apparently still unfulfilled, the Time of Jacob's Trouble, if not the Holocaust, is still unfulfilled, and the Seventieth Week of Daniel is still unfulfilled, as is the Great Tribulation Jesus spoke of unfulfilled.  All these prophecies appear to be different terms for one yet-future outpouring of God's wrath.   The timing in the Book of Daniel is too precise to be relegated to rough generalizations, and a tTribulation that God would have to shorten in His mercy simply has not yet happened. 

So there are still unanswered questions.

Richard Bennett gives us information the Church desperately needs

Here i'm posting a few of Richard Bennett's talks at Sermon Audio on subjects that Christians really need to know if there is any hope of reinstating the power of the Church that we should have but lost some time ago.

The false evangelical gospel that is taught in too many churches these days has supplanted the biblical gospel of the Reformers.  Bennett talks about how we need a Revival of the Reformation's five principles of salvation by Grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone based on Scripture alone for the Glory of God alone.   

 https://www.sermonaudio.com/saplayer/playpopup.asp?SID=1220182237362493

Here is Bennett discussing Pope Francis' Geopolitical ambitions and his duplicitous peacemaking in the Middle East.  Although Bennett doesn't support the futurist interpretation, who is more likely than the Pope to make the covenant with Israel that the Pre-Trib-Rapture scenario expects?

https://www.sermonaudio.com/saplayer/playpopup.asp?SID=81814121215

History of the Papacy -- this is history all of us should know, but there are probably very few Christians who do.   I've had a general knowledge of the history of Romanism for some time but Richard Bennett goes into much more of it.  For one thing he starts earlier than 606 AD when the Bishop of Rome was finally established as Universal Bishop, showing the stages by which the RCC acquired civil power and became the pagan religiopolitical behemoth that had murdered some 50 million "heretics"  by the time of Luther.  Anyone who wants the evidence should listen to this one at least.  He goes on to talk about how the Reformation started up in many different places simultaneously in reaction to the murderous enormities.  As he moves into modern times he discusses how the papacy aligned itself with Catholic dictators to bring about more murders.  

https://www.sermonaudio.com/saplayer/playpopup.asp?SID=116182115296

Bennett died last year at the age of 81 but his work is still online.  This is his website:

Berean Beacon    https://bereanbeacon.org/

Richard Bennett: Another Voice Identifying the Pope as the Antichrist and How We've Been Deceived by Futuristic Thinking

 When I first started my blog I had some topics in mind I knew I wanted to talk about, such as the head covering which I'd been studying for some time, and the Bible Versions controversy.  But while I was just getting started, while pursuing information on those and other topics, I kept sort of tripping over the topic of the Antichrist.  Eventually I got the message that God had that topic in mind for me to write about and I started listening to sermons at Sermon Audio on that subject.

The ex-Catholic priest Richard Bennett has done maybe the most thorough job of discussing the Pope as the Antichrist.  I was just now listening to this sermon of his:   https://www.sermonaudio.com/saplayer/playpopup.asp?SID=81703213440

Much of what he says confirms statements I've made here about how the Reformers interpreted scripture in identifying the Pope as the Antichrist.  It is Caesar they regarded as the Restrainer preventing the revelation of his identity, which today is thought to be the Holy Spirit.  Bennett nicely puts that one to rest.  He also mentions that his sitting in the temple was understood to be his position among the people of God who are the temple in the New Testament.

It's interesting that he traces the origin of the Pope as Anticrhist to a decree by the emperor Justinian in 538 AD instead of what I'd learned from Chris Pinto and the book "History of Romanism" of a decree by the emperor Phocas in 606 AD.  I suppose there must have been two decrees then.  The first according to Bennett established the title "Pope."   He didn't dwell on it but I want to note it because it's different from what I'd been saying.  He lists many down the centuries who were quite convinced from scripture of this identity of the Antichrist, starting with the Waldensians, John Wycliff, Jan Hus, the Protestant Reformers and continuing through many since then.   How the Church lost that once-well established knowledge is something that deserves thought.    

He objects strenuously to the last days scenario I've been pursuing here.  He is rightly angered that this futuristic scenario has prevented Christians from seeing the truth about the wolves in sheep's clothing that have already come, and the Great Apostasy that is the Roman Church itself.  \

The horrors depicted in Revelation are seen as ongoing throughout history, and there is no doubt that we can identify plenty of them, from murdering tyrants such as Nero down to Hitler to Rwanda (which was the work of the Catholic Church in killing 800,000). plus Jesuitical influence behind some modern tyrants and the doctrines of Communism, not to mention the Inquisition which was by no means limited to Spain but ongoing for centuries.  It is+ still ongoing in secret in some Catholic countries.   I think something along those lines is Chris Pinto's view too.  

It is understandable that he would reject today's futuristic eschatology because of how it has prevented us from seeing the biblical truths about the nature of the Antichrist and the "mystery of iniquity."  Nevertheless I still think the reasoning in support of the Pre-Trib prophetic view is good, but we have to give up the wrong ideas about Antichrist.   What we have then is a final Pope as THE Antichrist in a seven-year period which fulfills the many prophetic references in scripture to the Day of the LORD which is as yet unfulfilled.   Daniel's seventieth week is also unfulfilled and it fits right in.  Planet Earth had a definite beginning according to scripture, and it seems reasonable to suppose that it would also have a definite end, such as described in the Book of Revelation.   

I'd continue to defend the Pre-Trib interpretation of the Rapture, and the general outlines of Revelation as based largely on the symbolism in the Book of Daniel, including the appearance out of the Roman Empire of the little horn we take to be the Antichrist.   It is from Daniel that we get the idea that this figure is to strike a covenant with Israel that he will break in the middle of the seven years.   The historical view of the Antichrist as the papacy does bring into question the idea that there will be a rebuilt phyisical temple on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, and the idea of an Abomination of Desolation yet to come as the Antichrist sits in the literal rebuilt temple proclaiming himself to be God.  Since the Popes put themselves in the place of God anyway this action is superfluous.  

However, there is another little horn in the Book of Daniel that sprouts up out of the previous empire, Greece under Alexander, and that little horn is understood to have been Antiochus Epiphanes who desecrated the temple with a pig and was defeated by the Maccabees.  A miracle in the form of candles that didn't go out was part of the triumph, and it is, a historical event the Jews still celebrate as Hanukkah.  

The point is that it could be right to look for a parallel event performed by the little horn of the Roman Empire, which could be the final Pope sitting in a literal rebuilt temple.  Although he is already defined as sitting in the true temple of the people of God it is possible there could be a literal replay of the sort anticipated in the Pre-Trib eschatology.  Double fulfillments of prophecy do occur.  The idea that there will be a rebuilt physical temple comes from the Book of Daniel where it is said the "prince of the people who will come" those people being the Romans who destroyed the temple in 70 AD, will cause the sacrifices to cease.  This did occur of coruse when the temple was destroyed by general Titus, so the question is whether another yet-future Roman prince who does this is to be expected.  Ongoing sacrifices could only occur in a literal physical rebuilt temple.    This is all open to reinterpretation, however, with the historical view of the papacy we get from the Reformers. even if the little horn of the Roman Empire is the final Pope.  

As I've mentioned before, Pope Francis arrived with some interesting signs attending his election, which to my mind marks him as special in the line of Antichrists.   Being a Jesuit adds to his specialness, along with his radical anti-Christian messages to the world which are even more radical than his predecessors'.   If he is the final Antichrist the Day of the LORD, preceded by the Rapture of the Church, must be very very close, because he is in his mid-eighties.  That along with many other signs pointing to a Grand Finale should keep us all on the alert.

How soon?  Years\?  Not many if these clues are right, but a few are possible.  Months, Weeks,  Days?  All possible.  

Maybe there is yet time for the churches to engage in fervent united prayer for revival.

A Call for United Prayer for Revival from Sermon Audio

 I just discovered that the host of Sermon Audio.com which has an enormous collection of sermons on every topic, put out a call to prayer for revival to begin in January of this year, and I hadn't known it until now.  In fact the way I came across it was so accidental it seems supernatural.  With my bad eyes I was poking around trying to fix some pages that were out of alignment and didn't fill the whole monitor, don't know how they got that way, but I didn't hit the right icon a few times and on one such miss this page from Sermon Audio came up on my screen:

A JOINT RESOLUTION OF UNITED PRAYER

FOR THE

REVIVAL OF RELIGION

AND THE

ADVANCEMENT OF CHRIST'S KINGDOM ON EARTH.

https://www.sermonaudio.com/unitedprayer.asp

It is very much worth listening to his talk on this subject.   He starts out with some quotes about some of the most evil things you'll have ever heard, of Facebook posters putting up pictures of cruelty to animals and small children, as well as some horror stories from other parts of the world, the point being that we don't hear about such extreme evil in the world becuase it is kept from us.  This is reason enough for the Church to be in constant prayer.

His journal of the weeks of prayer so far is inspiring.

Here's his 

Synopsis.

This resolution is based on An Humble Attempt, originally put forward by Jonathan Edwards in 1748. Its design is to encourage God's people in the duty of united extraordinary prayer; setting aside some time every Saturday, privately or publicly, to pray for the revival of His church and the advancement of Christ's kingdom in our homes, in our churches, in our nation, and in the world.

He is calling for a commitment to one prayer time every week, on Saturday, and he has 236 people who have signed up for it.  It is to go for the 52 weeks of 2020.  When he put out this call he didn't know about the pandemic or the rioting or any of that.   People somehow sign their names to the document and I don't see how that is done yet.  

I'm very glad to see this but at the same time I have my usual doubts.  Other prayers and calls to pryaer for revival over the last few decades have not produced revival and I've been speculating here about possible reasons why not.  My guess is we need to start with repentance, both individual and as churches and I gave some conjectures about that.  

I certainly understand why it would be limited to once a week, but I also wish at least some of us could manage more than that.  For it to be united, however, which is Jonathan Edwards' focus, we need agreement with each other.  

But I don't want to go too far beyond where Steven Lee of Sermon Audio goes.  I'd just like this message to be passed around among as many Christians as possible.

How to Seek Revival

 Rather surprised to find myself so avidly pursuing the possibility of revival, even with some optimism for a change.   Even if the Rapture is right around the corner and the Tribulation when the Wrath of God will fall on those remaining.  Surely this is the best thing we should be doing, to bring as many as possible into the Kingdom so they won't have to endure all that. 

The pessimism I've had about revival over the years has been due to the false revivals that have come through the Charismatic Movement, and the unwelcome idea that the same thing would happen if we started having real revivals.  Most revivals get some of the strange phenomena anyway but they don't usually take over the whole revival.  Real revival is a serious deepening of the love of God and the life of God in us, of conviction of sin that leads to repentance, of the practice of holiness, and its power is for that sort of purpose, not little supernatural tricks.   But with charismatics still believing they had real revivials that sort of fleshly and demonic interference would try to piggyback on the real thing,   Toronto, Brownsville, Lakeland, all bogus revivals.  For some reason it's not bothering me as much now, maybe we can pray it down.

But the pessimism is also due to the simple fact that when strong Christians like Leonard Ravenhill and Kay Arthur have fervently sought revival it hasn't come.  That is very discouraging.   I've thought it may be because of systemic sins in the churches that are unrecognized, so this time I'm aware of how seriously we need to ask God to show us such a possibility and seek reprentance for it.   The uncritical acceptance of the Charismatic Movement is one such possible systemic sin, also the uncritical acceptance of the Roman Catholic Church as just another Christian denomination.  And the rejection of Paul's teaching in 1 Corinthians 11 about the need for women to cover our heads in church.  

Forewarned about all that and reforming along those lines we should be able to seek a genuine revival.   That's what I'm personally praying for anyway.

Googling for some inspiration on the subject I found a blog by a pastor in Missouri -- How to Get the Unction (Power) of the Spirit, by Geoffrey R. Kirkland at Vassal of the King blog: *- http://vassaloftheking.com/home/180007755/180007755/Images/How%20to%20get%20the%20unction%20of%20the%20Spirit.pdf 

He writes about the necessity of Holy Spirit power for preaching the gospel.  He's talking to pastors about preaching, not about revival, but the principle applies to the purpose of revival too.  

I like many of his expressions, such as "mighty weakness" as what the preacher needs, a complete dependence on God for the supernatural result of his peaching.  It's not natural ability but this dependence that is necessary for the unction that establishes  the gospel in the souls of hearers for their salvation.  Good pastors know this anyway, but what I like most about this essay is his call to fervency and even desperation, a strong increase in the normal patterns.

To answer the question how one gets this unction he gives four ways.  The first is Earnest Prayer which he describes in another inspiring phrase:  "earnest, fervent, relentless, believing, and desperate prayers."   Living holy lives is another prerequisite for the unction. 

This is also what we need for revival.   Pastors must be above reproach but if I had to have a consistently holy life in order to seek revival I'd have to give up.  Repentance is the key for me and for most of us sinners if we want God to respond to us.  It's essential.  God won't give us revival if we are holding on to unrepented sins, and we should ask Him to reveal our sins to us since we may be unaware of them.

With repentance as our foundation, and it needs to keep being renewed, then what we need is that "earnest, fervent, relentless, believing and desperate prayer" that God would rend the heavens and come down to us in great power so that our Christian lives would be strengthened and purified, and the gospel preached in power, and a huge number of souls saved.  The more we pray the better, and the more of us who are praying the better.  

And fasting also helps.  Somehow fasting opens up the spirit to hear from God and receive spiritual strength.   It doesn't have to be a complete fast, just avoiding foods we particularly like while eating the simplest most unadorned fare is very effective.

Posting this much for now but may be back to continue it.