Patience will sustain me; 'In Jesus for peace I abide'

I have to admit I have been struggling with anxiety/depression for the last week or so, brought on mostly by the return of feet problems and being told I have plantar fasciitis in my other foot—the one that was my “good foot” when I wore a medical boot on the other foot for five straight months last year. In fact, it was mid-December 2024 when I finally got out of it!

The “mental” conditions have taken a toll on me physically where I have to fight off tears and have even had several “anxiety attacks” at work where it’s hard to breathe and I have a rush of heat over my body even though the surrounding temperatures don’t warrant it. In these unsettling spells I find myself fighting to “stay in the game” with all the things that are being asked of me in a demanding retail job just ahead of Christmas.

The bottom line is if I didn’t have my full-time job, which requires constant physical labor on a cement floor, my foot problems would most likely go away almost overnight.

Tonight, in my sadness that I have a worsening, painful corn on my second-to-last toe on the new “bad foot,” I got out an old cassette tape of my dad’s that he regarded as a favorite in his last years.

Roger Williams is at the piano along with an orchestra and a full-blown church choir singing old-fashioned hymns, including my personal favorites of “Abide with Me” and “Fairest Lord Jesus.”

The lines I love so much from the latter go:

1    Fairest Lord Jesus, 
ruler of all nature, 
O thou of God and man the Son, 
Thee will I cherish, 
Thee will I honor, 
thou, my soul's glory, joy, and crown.

2    Fair are the meadows, 
fairer still the woodlands, 
robed in the blooming garb of spring: 
Jesus is fairer, 
Jesus is purer 
who makes the woeful heart to sing.

3    Fair is the sunshine, 
fairer still the moonlight, 
and all the twinkling starry host: 
Jesus shines brighter, 
Jesus shines purer 
than all the angels heaven can boast.

4    Beautiful Savior! 
Lord of all the nations! 
Son of God and Son of Man! 
Glory and honor, 
praise, adoration, 
now and forevermore be thine.

*****

The BIG thing I forgot to include in my post about my return to my hometown last week (December 11)  is that my dad always played hymns in his doctor’s office. This is what he was known for along with being a “diet doc,” etc., etc.

Here is a post from 2012 explaining this very thing:

My big Christmas present this year from my mom was an old-fashioned Crosley turntable and speakers in a wooden box. I had been without a working record player since I moved to Alabama and found my expensive Sony system broken inside the 12 ft. Budget truck I had rented.

The first record I wanted to hear upon setting the new machine up on top of my kitchen table was not what I thought I would when I opened the gift on Christmas morning at my mom’s house.

I thought I wanted to hear this bootleg Paul Simon LP I have from when he performed live in L.A. in the late ’70s and did all this incredible guitar and piano instrumental stuff with the live audience in the background.

What I ended up yearning to play most were some of my dad’s old vinyl records that I inherited when he died. What got me was looking at the old LPs and seeing his little stickers he had put on the labels with his handwriting in this red ink pen he bought by the dozens and used on everything from prescriptions to greeting cards.

Seeing the word “ALL” in all caps and underlined made me cry. That was meant for me, as his cassette-tape maker for his doctor’s office, to know I was to use any of the songs on that side of the record for my homemade compilations.

Playing these songs was SO important to him. He was compelled to make them part of the psyche of his children as well as every single patient who spent any time at all in his waiting room or on the examining table, etc.

They were such an integral part of his lifeblood as a family doctor that, before he caught on to making cassette tapes from the music, he would personally stop what he was doing to flip the side over on the LPs when it was time!

By chance, the first record I picked to break-in my new record player was one by Tennessee Ernie Ford, entitled, “Nearer the Cross.” I lifted my brand-new record arm for the first time and the first song on the A-side was, “Sweet Peace the Gift of God’s Love.”

The lyrics began with, “There comes to my heart one sweet strain,

A glad and a joyous refrain,

I sing it again and again,

Sweet peace, the gift of God's love."

The hymn ended with, “In Jesus for peace I abide, And as I keep close to His side,

There's nothing but peace doth betide.

Sweet peace, the gift of God's love"

*****

“The ultimate hope of our heart is not simply forgiveness, or simply justification or even heaven, but it’s really the glory of God. You and I, in Christ, are meant to savor and to experience God’s glory," says Richard Jordan in a study from Romans 12.

"That’s the ultimate thing that will wipe away every tear, rectify every wrong. That’s the ultimate thing that in the end will let you sing that song, ‘It was worth it all.’

He went on, “We sing that song, ‘It will be worth it all when we see Jesus.’ Because it’s the glory of God that makes that possible. 

II Corinthians 4: [17] For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory;

[18] While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.

"There’s that affliction. There’s the patience in tribulation. You see, the hope that sustained Paul’s joy in the afflictions--He said, ‘I’m rejoicing in hope; that makes me be patient in tribulation. I can endure because these afflictions are not meaningless. They’re not absurd. They’re not cruel. They’re not pointless.'

"No, it’s working for me an experience of the glory of God that will outweigh every moment in every degree of suffering in this life. They work for me a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.

“Patience is something that sustains you; keeps you there. Paul doesn’t just tolerate tribulation. He says, ‘God takes this tribulation and makes it serve you.’

“That passage in Romans 8 is right down to the level of the things you suffer because He left you here and didn’t take you to be with Him the moment He saved you. Some of that is bodily suffering. Some of it is the calamities of life. Some of it is the assaults of others. Some of it is your own stupidity.

“But what the hope in Christ does is He says He can take even that and, as He promised Israel, ‘give beauty for ashes.’ I can look out there and say, ‘My ace in the hole is in the end it’s just glory!’ And I can rejoice in that hope. Then I can abound, and when you’re abounding, you don’t think so much about hoping. You think, ‘I already got it, man!’ 

*****

“I once asked a guy in the airport if he knew where he was going to spend eternity and he answered, ‘I’m having too much trouble getting through today to worry about eternity.’ But that’s a mistake of thinking that that kind of future orientation, that future thinking process, limits the present usefulness in reality of life.

“Listen, understanding that you rejoice in hope, liberates you right now! If your future is glorious, if your future is sure because of Christ, you don’t have to live for money. You don’t have to live for power. You don’t have to live for fame. You don’t have to grasp and stash and chase for pleasure and for excitements that just slip through your fingers.

"You’re free to live for others. You’re free to serve the Lord by serving others. You’re free to let your love be genuine, let it be radical and sacrificial because of the joy that you have in Him. To let it sustain you, and it’s our prayers that allow us to see and savor the greatness and the preciousness of our hope.”

Life lived on His thinking process

(new article tomorrow)

“You know why you walk in love? Because you know what it’s like to be loved. That’s all there is to it. You know what it’s like to have someone love you when you didn’t deserve to be loved; when you were, of all things, unlovable.

“He said, ‘I didn’t love you because you were lovable; I loved you because of the will of my Father, and He loved you and gave Himself for you.’ I love that verse. Christ has given Himself for us for a sweet-smelling savor.

"Paul writes in Ephesians 4:16, [16] From whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love.

“ 'Joined together and compacted by' is that, ‘You can’t get a molecule between us,’ ” explains Richard Jordan. “There’s this harmony and solidarity and it’s held together ‘by that which every joint supplieth.’

“The Christian life isn’t me having the brains to run things; it’s, 'He’s the head.' You got all these members in your body that work in harmony and, in what I think is the most fascinating thing, the more you go into creation the bigger creation becomes.

"You talk about looking at the stars and how vast it is. I’ve always been fascinated by how the more you get into the molecular level of stuff, where the atoms and molecules are, there’s a big world there, too.

“What they’ve discovered with your molecules is every molecule is like a little factory. It’s got an intelligence center; it’s got an action center, a motor center. It’s got mechanisms in it and they all function; they all tell each other what to do and respond.

“Imagine if all the different molecules that make up your body decided to do what they wanted to do and not what the head says. You see, this is where disease comes from.

"Most of the time disease is some kind of blockage that keeps the proper information from coming down to that gland or organ made up of the cells, and it starts working on its own thinking process. It will gang up with a few others and work on that thinking process and make a tumor or whatever.

“But the brain is what controls it all. It’s the boss; it tells it what to do. And when the brain is in control of everything, it works and functions in harmony.

“By the way, the head also supplies the power to do it. You see, your Christian life isn’t lived on your thinking process; it’s lived on HIS thinking process. It’s not lived in your power; it’s HIS power. It’s ‘Christ in you, the hope of glory.’ It’s the working of HIS power IN us."

'Golden Age of America' roaring into view

Last Thursday, the same day Trump signed his executive order detailed in my last post, TIME magazine was the official featured guest of the New York Stock exchange with TIME's CEO Jessica Sibley ringing the opening bell.

On the same day, the “Architects of AI” were named TIME’s person of the year, with the magazine citing 2025 as when the potential of artificial intelligence “roared into view” with no turning back.

“For delivering the age of thinking machines, for wowing and worrying humanity, for transforming the present and transcending the possible, the Architects of AI are TIME’s 2025 Person of the Year,” TIME said in a social media post.

From the Associated Press wire story: "The magazine was deliberate in selecting people — the 'individuals who imagined, designed, and built AI' — rather than the technology itself, though there would have been some precedent for that.

"One of the cover images resembling the 'Lunch Atop a Skyscraper' photograph from the 1930s shows eight tech leaders sitting on the beam: Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, AMD CEO Lisa Su, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, the CEO of Google’s DeepMind division Demis Hassabis, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and AI pioneer Fei-Fei Li, who launched her own startup World Labs last year."

*****

No one in the media will tell you this but the term “golden age,” as Trump applies it, was made popular by occult favorite Helena Blavatsky in the 1800s.

In her writings, she notes, “Saturn, Mars, Sun, Moon, Jupiter, Mercury, and Venus, are the same celestial bodies that form the Mithraic ladder to heaven."

An essay on Blavatsky's teachings informs: Saturn as the king of the golden age, In many different traditions there is a direct relationship between the awakening of the higher mind and the emergence of golden ages. In Buddhism and other religions, gold (or yellow) is a symbol of pine ;consciousness and spiritual soul. Any golden age is an age of buddhi manas, or spiritual intelligence, and there is a direct connection between this higher mind and Saturn.

In the twenty-first century, Saturn's influence and lessons help us recover at least parts of the golden consciousness that leads to a golden society. In our present cycle, it means the awakening of the sixth, intuitive subprinciple, within the fifth, mental principle, or simply the rebirth of a spiritual intelligence, a higher level of consciousness from which the next civilizations must emanate.

Saturn, "the father of Gods," must not be confused with its namesake—the planet of the same name . . .the two—though in one sense identical, as are, for instance, physical man and his soul—must be separated in the question of worship. (Collected Writings 14:334)

So the material planet Saturn is the vehicle of the mythological Saturn. Although there is a clear difference between the material and spiritual aspects of this planet, the interaction between them is much like the relationship between physical man and his soul.

This planet is the master of karma, time, and structures.

Master of concentration, Saturn has an important role to play in the ladder to heaven taught in the Mithraic mysteries of ancient Rome. It is said that this ladder has seven steps. The first one corresponds to "the sky of Saturn," that is, the spirit of that planet.

In any sacred ladder, the first step upward presides over the transition between the lower ground and the way to heaven. The first step makes us confront the borderline between the material and pine dimensions of life. Thus, astronomically, Saturn is the planet of the rings and establishes the limit between the "domestic" and the "galactic" sections of our solar system.

Mythologically, this planet spirit also corresponds to the Jewish Christian god Jehovah. Chronos/Saturn, the stem god in the Paradise's golden age, tries to preserve spiritual life by preventing the personal ego from prematurely separating itself at the end of the first races.

*****

Here is an assessment of the "Golden Age" from a YouTuber in London, England who is a King James Bible Believer while not a dispensationalist:

The thesis, the antithesis, and the synthesis. The thesis is the starting point, then you have the antithesis, which is the opposite of the thesis, working through to the synthesis where they’re both merged together in a so-called higher truth. Two opposing things become merged as one.

If you can understand that you can understand their methodology, so this whole thing is a completely Hegelian battle and something that really woke me up was thinking of the "Lion King" movie and seeing exactly the method they’re using to deceive people, even the “truth movement.”

They want people to think that the New World Order is satanic. They want you and the masses to believe that this system needs to be disbanded; this system is wicked.

So Scar, in his song "Be Prepared,” is singing about this New World Order and posing as a Hitler-type figure, Nazi soldiers, and that’s what they want you to think.

This is why the controlled “truth movement” are pushing and pushing, saying, “This is satanic. The elite are satanic. They are evil. This system is evil.”

"Why is that? Because they want you to accept the son, as in the "Lion King", as in the false love and the false peace. They want you to root for whatever good comes along to defeat this evil system.

So at this stage in the game it’s the externalization of the hierarchy. They want you to know that they are satanic and this whole thing is satanic because the so-called Messiah, which is the false messiah, will come along, at whatever stage of the game it happens, and say, “Here’s the answer. Peace, unity, love.” But it’s the same thing.

There’s many in the New Age Movement who think the “golden age” is a good thing. Listen, New Age, think about it. This is what the New World Order is; it’s the NEW AGE. You’re just playing into the Luciferian lie—black vs. white.

It’s like the alchemy of it they want to lead into gold. It’s the defeat of the dragon by the false Jesus. They want you to think that by the onset of this New Age lot, world unity, they want you to think that that is the victory over Satan. Satan is a masquerader as light. So, it’s literally the defeat of the black by the white, but it’s the same beast.

Every religion across this world is going to accept the Antichrist as being the defeat of the dragon, but it isn’t. In fact, “love shall be the whole of the law,” said Alistair Crowley, but if you stand against their wickedness, or their plans, or their agenda, you will be see as disrupting the only hope we have of true peace of earth. If you don’t love their plan and their Luciferian ideologies, then you will be seen as the one not loving and you will be put to death.

So, as I’ve said, this has been in our faces for ever, ever so long. There’s a clip they removed from the "Lion King" that was a pilot that didn’t make it into the final thing and Scar even sings of the Golden Age: “Prepare for the Golden Age. Be prepared for the bright dawn of age.”

So what’s he singing in "Be Prepared"?

So, prepare for the chance of a lifetime
Be prepared for sensational news
A shining, new era
Is tiptoeing nearer

And where do we feature?

Just listen to teacher
I know it sounds sordid
But you'll be rewarded
When at last, I am given my dues
And injustice deliciously squared
Be prepared!

It's great that we'll soon be connected
With a king who'll be all time adored

Of course, quid pro quo, you're expected
To take certain duties on board
The future is littered with prizes
And though I'm the main addressee
The point that I must emphasize is
You won't get a sniff without me!

So prepare for the coup of the century
Be prepared for the murkiest scam (Ooh, la, la, la!)
Meticulous planning (We'll have food!)

*****

Personal notes for book:

For two summers in college, I worked at Wally's Camp Resort (yes, it preceded Wally World from the movie by decades) outside Loudonville, OH that had a waterslide and Putt-Putt with a concession stand. I often helped out at the waterslide and was a co-manager of the Putt-Putt where I ran a Sno Cone machine as a part of my duties.

When I squirted the different syrups on top of the scooped ice in front of the customers, including little kids, I often had to deal with bees coming around, and whenever one would land on the Sno Cone as I was about to serve it, I would instinctively flick it off with my index finger, sometimes even getting "oohs" and "ahhs" from the bystanders.

Vincent van Gogh, who to this day I can say has been a tremendous figure in my life, no matter how flawed he was, probably even saving my life in a way. Shortly after I moved to Chicago, I hit a real hard place where I was struggling with depression.

What really kicked it off was learning that my childhood dog, a Shih-Tsu we took in from a mall pet store who I treated like a baby, died at 12 years of age. It was like the straw that broke the camel's back for me, already super lonely from moving to a big city where I knew no one (accept my friend who moved with me from Ohio) and had to drive 30 miles through traffic to Naperville every day for my job.

On Saturdays, having the day off, I would walk to the lily pond inside The Rookery of Lincoln Park Zoo and sit by the water's edge and read Vincent van Gogh's letters to his brother, compiled in English by Irving Stone.

I would also go to the lakefront and read the letters, sitting on the stone slabs near the Diversey Street entrance. I read them so thoroughly that the old paperback had pen lines drawn under sentences on almost every page and then highlighter pink and blue under so many, many passages throughout.

This is what I was up to shortly before I was introduced to my church by a virtual stranger!

Tech bro rulebook for all, says Trump

(Sorry for delay in new article and will post this evening. We had a rare all-day snowstorm that seemingly brought out half the city to purchase last-minute items to weather the 4-6 inch event that began around noon.)

In meantime here’s an Agenda 2030 news update:

On Thursday, Trump signed an executive order that “blocks states from enforcing their own regulations around artificial intelligence and instead aims to create a ‘single national framework’ for AI.”

“We have to be unified. China is unified because they have one vote and that’s President Xi [Xinping],” Trump argued inside the Oval Office. “We have a different system, but we have a system that’s good. But we only have a system that’s good if it’s smart.” 

From the news outlet The Hill: “Trump argued in a Truth Social post that there should be ‘only One Rulebook if we are going to continue to lead in AI.’

“The Trump White House and its Silicon Valley allies have argued that preemption is necessary to prevent a patchwork of state AI laws that could disrupt innovation amid fierce competition with China.”

Here’s commentary from a YouTuber:

“Trump just signed an executive order federally protecting AI companies from state law violations. That’s federal protection from any state law violations on the tech bros; the PayPal mafia, including Peter Thiel who doesn’t even know if humanity should continue or not.

“This places the AI robber barons, quite frankly, above the state and essentially they’re creating this new technocratic nobility class. Donald Trump has and all these MAGA entities are completely on board, hook, line and sinker and telling their crowd that this guy’s still the greatest thing since sliced pickles.

"It’s very disturbing what’s happening, and I hate the fact that the left vs. right paradigm lie has literally made mush of people’s brains.

"For example, at one time if the Democrats were in power, there was a whole group of conservatives (you know, team MAGA, the GOP, Team Red, Team Republican) out in force against Agenda 2030.

"But now that their guy’s in office pushing Agenda 2030, under the new technocratic AI elite leadership and the surveillance and control grid, then all of a sudden it’s okay."

*****

"Our problems arise from the huge concentration of wealth in our society. The billionaire class gets its way on everything. They buy elections, they buy legislation. Ultimately, it’s a problem of the maldistribution of wealth in spectacular ways," says a national political analyst.

"The three people standing behind President Trump at his inauguration were Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk. Three individuals who controlled more wealth than half of our country.

"You see the charts of distribution of wealth and the top 1/10^th of 1 percent control 15 percent of the wealth. The top 10 percent control about 30 percent of the wealth. The bottom 50 percent control 2.5 percent of the wealth in our country."

Time element

(new personal info tomorrow for certain)

"To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven"--Ecclesiastes 3:1

From Science Digest: "Each of us has two time scales. Society divides time linearly into hours, days and years, while our internal scale follows logarithmic laws. For example, a year is 20% of a 5-year-old's life so far but only 2% of a 50-year-old's. Therefore, the perception of time depends on not only the number of neural 'events' in the brain but also the internal nonlinear way in which we measure time."

*****

Sometimes Believers talk about how Jesus Christ "left eternity and stepped into time." What is meant by that is He stepped out of the domain where God is--the dimension where He is--into creation. But the reality is there is time where God is when He’s just God.

Time is the measure that you give to sequential events. If you have no time, it would be like . . . time is really where there’s a sense in which it always exists, or you can’t have any phenomenon of life.

Well, the godhead have an eternity (a constant, never-ending existence) where there are things happening, so there’s a technical sense in which you would say, "It isn’t true to say there’s no time in heaven or eternity because how do you measure whatever you measure in the nanoseconds of eternity?" You’re not trying to deny there’s a sequence of events.

But when you start talking about creation, time takes on the dimension of events in creation and the difference between time and eternity is eternity has no beginning and no ending; it’s infinite.

Time in creation, while it may not have an ending, it certainly had a beginning; a point at which, in the beginning, before which there weren’t any of whatever was after the beginning began.

Philosophers just get it all wound up because, you know, Plato had ideas about this and reality and . . . then there’s St. Augustine . . . and pretty soon you go, "Oh, man, I think I’ll just get a Dr. Pepper, eat a Moon Pie and go to bed!"

In Scripture time is associated with creation. The fullness is associated with bringing it to its ultimate conclusion. What is the phenomenal experience of creation ultimately for? Ultimately, why did God create a universe in which people would experience that universe? What’s the ultimate purpose of time?

Isaiah is very clear. Psalms is very clear. Proverbs is very clear. God created the universe to have a place for Him to manifest Himself and dwell among a creation who would enter into His life; think like He thought and live for one another spontaneously like He lives and like the members of the godhead live for one another (in which He could share the glory of His life; experience it, rejoice in it, glory in it).

Well, that’s what happens out there when Christ becomes "the head of all things." We now know that the way He’s going to do that, the mystery of it, is He had the plan to do it in the heavens—the whole of creation and not just the earth.

It’s the "dispensation of the fulness of time." So there’s a time element associated with all of this. In my mind I say, "I wonder what that time element is? How long is that supposed to be?"

And you hear people say, "Well, He created the heaven and the earth in seven days." So why did He create it in seven days? Well, a day with the Lord is as a thousand years and a thousand years is as a day.

*****

There’s a principle when you study prophecy, especially studying the Old Testament, one of the most important ways to describe dispensational Bible study to people is to point out the issue of progressive revelation.

When you study dispensationalism, you’re studying a time line. As the time line goes on, people know more than they did before.

Progressive revelation says there’s things back there they didn’t know that now we do know. The basis of dispensational truth is understanding the differences between that. Well, when you understand that principle, then the idea of typology becomes a fascinating subject to you.

“What happens with typology is you have things happen that you get over here, and you begin to understand something, and you’re able to look back at history back here and see how God did things, said things and taught things that at the time you didn’t know what they meant, but now you do know what they mean and can look back and see, "Oh, look! There’s a picture of this reality PRE-WRITTEN in the text!"

“In modern terminology we talk about prototypes. It’s a pre-picture of the reality that comes over here. A prototype demonstrates to you that whoever is writing this and organizing this, knows the future so when the reality comes, and it tells you what it is, He can say, "See, I had this planned all along. Look how I did that and look how I did this."

My very own 'near death experience'

(Editor's note: The New Balance 990 tennis shoes mentioned below aren't working out and I now, as in it's just popped up in the last two weeks, have plantar fasciitis in what was my "good foot" and have no idea what I will do--my foot doctor just had back surgery--but it doesn't look good for my job pounding a cement floor for 40 hours a week.)

Going home to Loudonville, OH recently on a day trip (October 17) after a 24-year lapse (when I helped clean out our family house after my dad's unexpected death in October, 2001) couldn't have come at a better time. I figure I might as well have driven through the Rockies.

In fact, I thought to myself as I drove the roads inside the Mohican Forest (the same ones I constantly bicycled as a teenager and college student), "My day-long odyssey drive inside the Grand Canyon, including a gorgeous sunset, wasn't as special as this!"

At long last, I was reunited with the super-hilly roads I knew by heart as a cyclist. Fortunately, everything came back to me in the most rewarding way, truly bringing back childhood and who I really am.

Now, I have to remind you from a previous post (October 19) that I had just read an article about near-death experiences and told myself, "I have to live like my life is really close to almost being over if I'm ever going to accomplish the things I want for myself before I die."

Anyone who counts me as a friend knows I've been FOREVER working on a book about teachings from the King James Bible. The reality is I was "writing" this book even before my dad died very suddenly one month after 9/11 in 2001.

In fact, my second to last phone conversation with him (one I actually borrowed a friend's landline to make as I attended a birthday party inside his SOHO loft in NYC) was the SAME Saturday night he later fell in his home and proceeded to treat his broken hip with injectable shots of the heavy-duty painkiller Talwin.

My dad, a medical doctor with his own private practice in Loudonville (1974-1994), kept all kinds of hard-core medicine on the lamp table and bookshelves nook next to his reclining chair. He wanted to be ready for anything I guess.

He asked me that night, "Are you working on that book?"

My last conversation with him was only a few hours before his death! It lasted for three minutes tops. It was just before he was being prepped for surgery and I said, "I'll be praying for you." He said, "Do that." That was our end!

*****

Okay, now I've got to break in with this detail from my visit to Loudonville. I turned left onto Loudon Avenue from the same stretch on Route 60 where we lived at 525 Union St. and could not believe that next-door to the spot where my dad's old office, since torn down, sat is now a cannabis dispensary!!! 

In a way, and I'm in no way endorsing marijuana, etc., nothing could somehow be more ironic. In our time in Loudonville my dad gained a major reputation as a "diet doc" who would dispense medicine to help people curtail their hunger, reduce stress and anxiety, etc.

Patients would drive sometimes from 70-90 miles away just to see my dad and have him send them home with pills.

*****

I prayed that I would have my own near-death experience to make me realize in the most penetrating way that my life is close to being over and could even only be a few years away if I am fortunate enough.

When I neared the town limits of Loudonville, coming down that last big majestic, forested hill on Route 3 as you near Mohican State Forest, I knew I was truly, truly home, as in, if I can request one last road to drive on, this forest would be it. (If I had one last physical activity, it would be swimming in the Atlantic at South Beach, Miami, just at the same stretch I first swam in at the age of 5.)

Nobody but me and my Savior know exactly what it meant to me all the bazillion times I rode my bicycle through the forest. I remember times when I was so sad climbing those hills I didn't know how I would go on with life. I remember all the dreaming and imagining, too.

Making the turn onto Route 97 was one thing for my emotions, but then when I turned onto the forest road leading to the Clear Fork Gorge and the Fire Tower my soul was fully engaged. I might as well have been at the Grand Canyon, or inside Big Sur, or cycling the Blue Ridge Parkway--all things I've done by myself and found very memorable.  

Seeing the heavy pine needles on the berm, just exactly like when I would climb that first initial hill in the thick heavily dark woods on my bicycle, I was transported back like a soothing balm from heaven to my high school years when I first discovered my addiction for riding all through this forest.

Of course, I could hardly contain my excitement to reach the gorge, recognized as a Natural National Landmark. As the historic site sign at the place where you first see the amazing landscape informs, the gorge, filled with white pines and towering hemlocks, is 1,000 ft. wide and 300 ft. deep.

"The seclusion has preserved a rare forest community," says the sign. "The gorge has changed little since pioneer legend Johnny Appleseed tended his apple orchards nearby."

Oh, yes, my old "secret friend" Johnny. Unlike during my youth, now many of the highways in and around Loudonville have official road signs that read "Johnny Appleseed Scenic Byway."

Absolutely nobody knew that I used to regularly think about Johnny as I rode my bike all through the territory. I knew it was THE territory he covered!!!

Definitely more to come on Appleseed and how he became a real disappointment.

*****

Here is my post from November 4:

The biggest takeaway from my trip to my hometown of Loudonville, OH on October 17 is that I knew I was really going home--like no other place I've ever lived.

After all, having moved there from Akron at age 10 and not leaving until going away to college at 18, it’s where I really became me--my personality, my convictions, my affinities, my dreams, on and on.

Getting off at the Sunbury exit of I-71N is when the journey home, after a 24-year absence, really started to take hold of me.

Despite all the retail and housing development, I knew old Route 36 from the many, many times I’d traveled between Loudonville and Columbus over the years, most especially after I got my first car (a used Plymouth Horizon hatchback) my junior year at Ohio State and could drive home whenever I wanted.

The first town to grab me was Centerburg, which still has the sign at the village limits to tell you it’s the “Geographical Center of Ohio.” More than a few times I rode my bike all the way to Centerburg before heading back home on a real hilly Route 3. This was soon after I first got serious about cross-country cycling my senior year of high school.

Next up was Mt. Vernon (settled in 1805), “America’s Hometown,” as recognized on its town entry sign. I remember when there was an entry sign letting you know it was the “Home of Paul Lynde,” a comedian (Uncle Arthur from Bewitched and the “center square” on The Hollywood Squares game show) who always portrayed himself as being effeminate. Among many historical buildings in downtown Mt. Vernon is an opera house that is the oldest of its kind in America.

I was near-mesmerized the closer I got to Loudonville and the sentimental emotions washed over me when I saw the little old stone Zion Lutheran church that sits on a hilltop right next to the road near Jelloway, OH, which is 9 miles from Loudonville.

How many times I would ride my bike to this church as my intended destination before turning back home. I would often get off my bike there and sit on the front stoop, drinking water and resting.

*****

Here's post from October 19:

I was reading the results of a study on people who faced difficult aftermaths following an NDE (near-dear experience) and I thought, “But I would love to know what that’s like.”

(Note: The journalist in me can’t resist giving you at least a few findings. From Study Finds: “More than one in five participants said their relationships with family, friends, or people in general got worse after the experience. Another 22% reported a divorce or breakup . . . Researchers describe the period after a near-death experience as ‘reentry problems,’  a kind of culture shock. Imagine tasting perfect peace and love, then waking to traffic, bills, and petty arguments . . .  Many wrestle with what one researcher called ‘the perceived triviality of their life or the problems they were facing before the NDE.’ The sense of unconditional love becomes a sharp contrast to ordinary life. Some feel anger or depression at having returned to what felt like ‘home’  only to find themselves back here. ‘I just feel awake to reality, but alone in that knowledge,’ one participant wrote.”)

With a couple of days off work last week, I knew I needed to get a pair of New Balance 990s that my foot doctor recommended. I had already gone to our neighborhood shoe store (an official dealer of New Balance) to learn they didn’t have my size (11 ½) and that it would be two weeks if they ordered them, so I looked online and saw there was a New Balance factory outlet store in Sunbury, OH.

This was the little town we always looked forward to getting to by car during my childhood growing up an hour north in the little resort/farming village of Loudonville, OH.

It’s where we finally could get on I-71 S and know we were almost to Columbus. We would sometimes stop at the giant McDonalds just below the interstate's entrance ramp and go to the bathroom and buy a sandwich and drink on Sunday afternoons following church (the old First Baptist in downtown Loudonville) and quickly going home to change out of our dress clothes before getting on the road. All there really was at the time besides the McDonald’s was a Wendy’s and a few gas stations. Now, as I was astonished to see, the town is a bustling bedroom community for Columbus commuters.

Just the week before, celebrating my brother’s birthday at a seafood restaurant, he and his wife told me and mom all about their trip to Loudonville for its annual free street fair (ongoing since 1876) and a high-school reunion by my brother's Class of 1979. My sister-in-law wanted to know when I ever planned to go back to Loudonville. The last time I was there was when my dad died in October, 2001 and I was charged with helping clean out our family home.

To be continued tomorrow. I am finding it hard to get back into writing about myself since I’ve pretty much let the “muscles” atrophy but, trust me, this is all leading somewhere . . .

Heavy on metal, light on common sense

(well, sure enough, still working on personal installment and will post tomorrow now for certain)

“It’s just fascinating to me how often and how thoroughly regular people miss the danger in music. They’ll protect their kids in every way except that, and you need to be careful. A lot of times parents don’t protect their children because they themselves are not protected against it.”--Richard Jordan.

*****

An old saying is, “When the devil fell out of heaven he landed in the choir loft.” We all know Lucifer was THE superstar musician.

On her Christian website Crossroads, Norwegian author Berit Kjos presents this excerpt from her book, “How to Protect Yourself from the New Age and Spiritual Deception”:

“Man's attempts to transcend the boundaries of the physical world through music are intricately interwoven with the history of mankind. While God encouraged His people to enter His presence through genuine worship and songs of praise, Satan offered seductive counterfeits.

“Thus, pagan societies used music as a conduit to help them connect directly with the occult spirit realm. Neville Drury, who promotes New Age meditation and visualization in his book, Music for Inner Space, points to ancient cultures as models for today:

" ‘In societies where magic and myth define and influence everyday existence, man aspires to be like the gods and to imitate them.... [Magical] incantations and songs are a source of Power.’

“In primitive Africa and South America, witch doctors function as mediators between the tribe and demonic spirits. The sacred drum (credited with magical powers) together with hallucinatory drugs (sorcery) induces trances, which transports him into the spirit world where he receives occult guidance and power.

“Nanci des Gerlaise, author of Muddy Waters, is the daughter and granddaughter of Cree medicine men. Now, as a believer in Christ, Nanci warns others about the occult music in Native Spirituality:

" ‘Now when I hear powwow music, my spirit recoils, and I know that it is because there are spiritual forces of darkness at work. Some people, even some Christians, believe there are two different kinds of powwows -- one used only for entertaining tourists and the other for traditional competitions. Frankly, it makes no difference to the spirit world which version is used as long as there are drums and chanting.’ ”

*****

"Music is an essential part of life. Every piece of living creation has music to it; has a vibration—that’s what music is. Music is really just math in regard to the tonal vibrationism," says Jordan.

“When the Bible says back in Ezekiel 36 about the trees singing, well, they literally do. Music is so engrained in the creation that it’s everywhere.

“So, when you see music, people call it ‘the universal language.’ You can affect people with music. One of the most dangerous things that happens with your children is the music they listen to, because it communicates ideas and you don’t even need to have words to go along with it.

“Listen, baroque music is considered to be the highest form of musical expression, but Mozart was an ungodly wreck. They’ve done experiments where if people have Mozart in the background, they actually do better in their learning curve. You think, ‘Oh, that must be godly music.’ You ought to go find out something about Mozart!

*****

“My point is, in I Chronicles 24, David organized the priests. Why didn’t he just let them do it any way they wanted to do it? Because God is ‘not the author of confusion.’ So in chapter 25, he’s going to organize the music ministry. He talks about the choir directors and the singers.

“When you hear about this guy, Asaph, understand this about him—he was not just a musical director.

“As I Chronicles 25:1 says, ‘Moreover David and the captains of the host separated to the service of the sons of Asaph, and of Heman, and of Jeduthun, who should prophesy with harps, with psalteries, and with cymbals: and the number of the workmen according to their service was:’

“Notice what they’re doing. They’re not just singing; they’re prophesying. In other words, God’s Word was being communicated in the psalms that they sang.

“This is a teaching prophesy, but I want you to notice what he does in Psalm 78. What he does, if you read down through that chapter, what’s literally here in Psalm 78, is a recap of the history of Israel from the Exodus all the way to through the reign of David.

“This tells you that from Exodus to II Samuel where David is, it’s used here as a prophetic parable to teach Israel about what’s going to happen to her in the ‘last days.’ That’s why Hosea says, ‘As in the days of your youth . . . ’

“Hosea 2:15 says, ‘And I will give her her vineyards from thence, and the valley of Achor for a door of hope: and she shall sing there, as in the days of her youth, and as in the day when she came up out of the land of Egypt.’

“Psalm 105 and 106 are others recounting the history of Israel. Those psalms are laying out a dress rehearsal for what’s going to happen in the ‘last days.’ ”

*****

“Music is not an issue of sacred and secular. Lazy Christians have made secular and sacred out of life, but you don’t have a sacred life and a secular life; you only have a life in Christ, and in the Bible, music is music. It’s not church music and ‘Saturday-night-boogie-oogie-woogie’ music.”

Job. 22: 15-17: “Hast thou marked the old way which wicked men have trodden?
[16] Which were cut down out of time, whose foundation was overflown with a flood:
[17] Which said unto God, Depart from us: and what can the Almighty do for them?”

“They’re saying exactly what the people in Genesis 21 say, but the context is some people who were overthrown in the days of Noah in the Flood.

“What I’m trying to get you to see is God created music and from the creation to the Flood, music didn’t go up, it went down and it degenerated from the Creation morning until it debauched the world and filled it with violence.

"They weren’t praising God; they didn’t want to know Him and He wound up wiping them out. You have to be careful about music. Just because you like it don’t make it good for you!"

*****

From the Book of Daniel, we know Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar, a picture-type of the Antichrist, employed loud, beat-driven music to engender the mass idolatrous worship of his “beast” image by all the rulers of the nations—it’s judges, police, politicians, etc.

“It was a regular ‘rock festival,’ ” writes Noah Hutchings in his 1998 book, Daniel the Prophet. “Now, why would Nebuchadnezzar accompany this anti-God mass with loud music? Satan knows the power of music to stir the emotions of man and to deaden his natural senses.

 “Loud and discordant music brings out the worst beastlike qualities in man and drives him on to godless pursuits and inhuman behavior. It is no wonder that Nebuchadnezzar used loud and harsh music at his worship service that was base and godless. And this is why we question the wisdom of using modern rock music in the worship service today.”

 *****

When Daniel’s three Hebrew compatriots held in Babylonian captivity—Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego—remained true to God and refused to worship Nebby’s image, they were by the king’s law to be cast into a fiery furnace.

“The king was absolutely furious, but he doubtless liked his three Jewish governors, and he said to them, ‘I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’ll have the band play my song one more time, and if you fall down and worship the image, we will forget all about this first offense. But if you are still stubborn and refuse to worship the image, when the last note is played I will order the guards to overpower you and throw you into the furnace.’

 “We notice in these last verses which we read that the musical portion of this false and idolatrous worship service is stressed twice again. Music can be used to create any type of specific mental attitude that is desired . . ."

Hint: Two numbers that are all the rage

I am going to return to my life story tomorrow for sure. Meantime, guess what this pastor, in an online sermon I came across, is talking about:

“Kids just think it’s a funny thing they do, but Skrilla is a self-professed member of the church of Santeria or the church of Satan. He worships Orisha and Egun and you can watch him on podcasts and interviews where he tells you he sacrifices goats and mice, depending on what the sacrifice is, and he does it so that he can have favor in Hollywood.

“He talks about how since he’s really dedicated himself to it, putting blood oaths to it, his career has taken off.

“Now, here’s something really fascinating. Why does a guy who presents himself as a hard-core thug rapper, where the song in question is only about two minutes long, and it is about sex and drugs . . . by the way, if you listen to the song, and I don’t recommend you do, it just sounds, honestly, like he’s speaking in tongues—you’d have to have subtitles to understand what is being said . . . he’s singing about drink and drugs and sex, and then half way through the song, he does the Baby Shark theme!

“Now, tell me, why would a rapper who has this hard-core persona, who’s singing about things that are for mature audiences, fill the middle of his song with the Baby Shark theme?

“Unless he wanted to appeal to an audience, and now our entire country has our kids doing this thing with their hands and shouting the words out.

“I know, people say, ‘No, pastor you’re being over-obsessed with the thing. Six-seven is just where he’s from, from his city.’

"So it has no connection to the God Egun or the god Olodumare who he says he worships?! Who he says, if you go in, I forget the name of the bowl, but you put in a name with a birthday in the bowl, anything you want to happen to that person happens to them. Shot, stabbed, whatever.”

*****

What does Merriam-Webster Dictionary say?

“Six seven (or 67 or 6 7, etc.) is a nonsensical expression used especially by teens and tweens that is connected to a rap song and also to a 6’ 7” tall basketball player.

“Teens and adults alike have tried to explain it. Some say it means ‘so-so,’ especially since kids often pair the phrase with an up-and-down hand motion. Others argue it refers to a person who is tall, some think it stands for a basketball term, and so on. The bottom line is, the term ‘six seven’ is nonsensical—which is sort of the point. As one tween TikToker put it under another video, ‘I think the point is that it makes no sense.’ ”

Music lesson

Commentary from a Christian YouTuber:

The NFL strategically placed Bad Bunny as the 2026 Superbowl halftime show so they could rile up the MAGA audience into hysterics because Bad Bunny doesn’t have one song that is actually in English.

He’ll be performing at halftime rapping in Spanish the entire time, or whatever you want to describe his music as, if you want to call any of these Hollywood-celebrity-music-industry types as actually performing music. They’re not performing anything other than dumbing down the audience that listens to them with lyrics that will give you a lobotomy.

Donald Trump has come out and said they’re going to have actual ICE agents at the Superbowl. That just shows you what theatrics all of this is.

Obviously, the NFL knows what they’re doing; they know the temperature in America. They could just pick some safe performer to put on some spellcasting, as every Superbowl halftime show is a massive ritual.

But no, they picked Bad Bunny. Nobody in the planning room said, “You know, that’s probably not a good idea with all the stuff going on with ICE and MAGA and the left and the right and the whole Charlie Kirk thing.”

This guy’s playing a role. This guy has been given this massive pedestal in America where he is now this massive musician. You say, “How is this guy popular in America when he doesn’t even speak English in his songs?!”

There’s this spellcasting in music where you listen to it, and you listen to some of Bad Bunny’s songs where he’s talking about drugs, sex and making money, using explicit sexual phrases and actual curses . . .  People don’t even know what he’s singing but they’re listening to it.

*****

As we know, Satan’s spirit works in lost people and the creative genius of unsaved men and women is satanically inspired.

“Did you know that music is one of the most dangerous things in your life, second only to false religion?” says Richard Jordan. “In fact, it’s false religion that gives music its power in your life.

“Music is powerful. It’s called the universal language and it affects everybody the same no matter what language you speak. The moguls that produce that stuff have a spirit behind them.

“Music is the only language in the world that affects people even when they don’t know it's happening. It’s designed to control.

“Your music influences your spirit, your soul and your body. You don’t have a choice about that; it does it and it controls. It controls you and you respond to it.”

*****

In what has to be one of the dumbest observations of all in Rick Warren’s Purpose-Driven Drivel, he writes, “God loves all kinds of music because he invented it all—fast and slow, loud and soft, old and new. You probably don’t like it all, but God does!”

To make matters worse, he then observes, “Christians often disagree over the style of music used in worship, passionately defending their preferred style as the most biblical or God-honoring. But there is no biblical style!”

*****

All through the Bible are references to music—the kind that pleases God and the kind that doesn’t.

We know from the Book of Genesis God was the one to set up music and it degenerated with the fall of Satan. Exodus tells us how God restored music to its original purpose when He called the nation Israel out of Egypt. It later degenerated. From I Chronicles 16, we know God rescued music once again with David, and then it degenerated again.

Then there’s the passage in Amos 5 in which God tells Israel He despises their idea of “feast days” and “solemn assemblies,” giving the sharp rebuke, “Take thou away from me the noise of thy songs; for I will not hear the melody of thy viols.”

“They’ve got a melody that God says is nothing but noise,” explains Jordan. “Now, it is a melody, but God said, ‘It’s not a melody I want; take it away!’

So their church music had degenerated from something that God designed it to be into noise and into violating the rules of the language of music to the extent that God said it’s just noise.”

“The world you live in, if you’re under 30 years old today, you have never have been fed a steady diet of music that pleases God,” says Jordan. ‘And if you’re over 30, it was way back when when you maybe heard it.

“Contemporary Christian music is gutless. It has to do with the way it’s written; it has nothing to do with the people doing it. Good people, nice people may be doing it, but if you write bad music—if you follow the rules of music that cause it to be weak—what kind of music do you get? Weak music.

*****

Listed in I Chronicles 16: 8-12 are nine reasons David gives for the music he’s writing and they match what Psalm 68:4 and Col. 3:16 say about the three categories of music.

“God has music and He does it His way all through the Bible,” says Jordan. “What you want to do is find out how God does His music and do your music that way—not just your church music, but your music.

“There’s an order and a structure to the way God does things and you can’t miss the fact that God is a God of planning, order and structure. Proverbs 11:1 says, ‘A false balance is abomination to the LORD: but a just weight is his delight.’

“If you take that word balance, you’ve got the key to good music, and when I talk about good music, I’m talking about music that pleases God.

“Music is a language and a language has grammar. When you write a sentence, you have a subject and a predicate. It has structure to it. If you see a prepositional phrase, you know how to diagram that; you learn the parts of speech. Well, in music there’s three parts of speech. Melody, harmony and rhythm. Those three things are what music is constructed out of.

“Melody, that’s the tune. God’s spirit works through His Word and melody in music is designed to carry the words. It’s designed to help you understand the words and to say the words and to preach the words. Melodies are constructed in very specific ways. There’s an exact, mathematical design that you construct a melody with.

“Now, harmony is when you play two or more notes at one time and it carries the melody. All of this has an exact science to it. Melodies run horizontally. Chords—or the harmony—run vertically. The chord is how you get your feelings affected.

“By the way, the melody makes you think something and harmony makes you feel something. Rhythm makes you do something. Each one’s designed to affect your spirit, your soul and your body, in that order. The melody impacts your spirit (Phil. 3:3), harmony impacts your soul (Eph. 4:16) and rhythm impacts your body or your flesh (Rom.13:14).

“God works through His word as you in your inner man trust it and His word works out through your soul and your body. In music, the place you’re going to worship God is in the melody because we worship God in spirit and the melody’s what matches your spirit. That’s what God’s interested in.”

From Isaiah 51:3, a passage about the future kingdom when God redeems Israel, we know there’s going to be a pure music restored by God and it will be carried in the melody.

The verse says, “For the LORD shall comfort Zion: he will comfort all her waste places; and he will make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the LORD; joy and gladness shall be found therein, thanksgiving, and the voice of melody.”

(new article tomorrow)