Sermons From Witness 1 and Reader Compilations: Strong Men of God

This post will include more of Witness 1's real life sermons that are given in our real-life ministry, and then in Part 2, there are some writings from actual readers we wanted to share with others. These are from men we believe are "strong men of God" - Drew, Roger_, Anonymous A, ColorTree, Richard, and_ Christian Caveman_._

Note: This is an extremely long post, but we hope you take your time to read through it and enjoy it this weekend! It is worth it.

Repentance, Witchcraft, and Apologetics

Witness 1

The following is a combination of three sermons I gave through our real-life ministry. Due to this, it might be formatted slightly differently than my writings for our site and books, so if you want further clarification or sources on anything I wrote here please contact us and we will be happy to provide them.

One thing I often point out in my sermons is that, growing up in the church, I never really heard any pastors talking about why one should believe in Christianity. There was plenty of repetitive theology and the same old Ephesians sermons and stories about Moses, but never anything about why I should think any of this is true.

For further context, we are in charge of a worldwide, online ministry where we are supporting many people in deep poverty, especially compared to American standards. Our ministry focuses on the truth of Jesus Christ, and we do not change what we preach to keep members.

Modern evangelical pastors need to stop with the milk and give people some real meat. Part of this should include sermons on apologetics, fulfilled prophecy, ELS codes, arguments like mine, and sermons on the historical Jesus. Through my writing, I am attempting to plug this gap in the modern church. Let’s begin.

Witness 2 and I have both been surprised with some of our interactions through our ministries, in that we have heard some of our members say something which we rarely hear - the idea, as a Christian, that it’s possible to be a human being without needing to repent.

(Witness 2 Note: For context, a third-world brother in Christ was messaging me about hardships in his church. I told him his people needed to repent. He replied, "Everyone says they don't have anything to repent for!")

Now, this is part of Christianity 101 - we are all sinners and everyone needs to repent. There is not one Holy person to God.

Romans 3: 10 reads, “As it is written: ‘There is no one righteous, not even one’”
Isaiah 64: 6 reads, “All our righteous acts are like a filthy cloth to God”.
1 John 1:8-10 reads, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.”

Part of being a Christian, therefore, is recognizing that you always need to repent. To sum it up simply, it’s impossible for each one of us to ever fully live up to Jesus’s commandment to love each other as ourselves. Given our fallen, sinful, and human state, while we can make a valiant effort and try our best, we will never fully overcome the psychological, spiritual, emotional, and physical limitations that curtail us from being able to fully carry out God’s will by treating others as equal to ourselves, and thus, to Him. We will always be selfish in the end, no matter how hard we try. Whether subconsciously or consciously, this self-preservation and self-reward instinct is impossible to fully overcome.

This is precisely why Jesus’s blood and sacrifice on the cross has the atoning and sanctifying power that it has - only He was ever able to live the perfect life that we are called to have, and only His willing, knowing, and voluntary sacrifice on the cross can wipe away the sins we commit on a day-to-day basis, often without even realizing it.

In the Old Testament, they “repented” by sacrificing animals or other tangible items, preferably a first-born male animal without blemish. However, as myself and many others have pointed out, “the law” never saved anyone. There is not one single Old Testament Jew who will not have to go through the judgement seat of Christ before the Great White Throne because they followed the law so carefully.

Rather, the law exists only as a mirror to show us what the above verses say - no matter how many “good” deeds or “righteous acts” we do, they will never be enough to provide salvation on our own merits. This is what Buddhists, Jews, Hindus, Muslims, and even atheists are all incorrect about, and what sets Christianity apart from other religions. Only Christianity places everyone at the same level, from a noble charity worker who gives up their life to serve the disenfranchised to the murderer who dies with hatred in his heart - we ALL need to repent and we ALL need Jesus in the end to save us.

A parable to study to learn how to repent as a Christian is the parable of the old and new wineskins, in which Jesus tells us not to put old wine, the old law, into new wineskins, the new, budding religion of Christianity. In fact, this is why the power structures hated both Jesus and Paul so much – they were saying that the ruling authorities and the Law of the Torah had no more power or authority, because it was fulfilled through Jesus Christ.

Galatians 3: 10 reads:

For all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse.

Romans 10: 4 reads:

For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.

Romans 3: 28 reads:

For we maintain that a person is justified by faith apart from the works of the law.

Romans 7: 6:

We have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.

Galatians 4: 21:

Tell me, you who want to be under the law, are you not aware of what the law says?

And finally, in 1 Corinthians 9, Paul clarifies explicitly in verse 20 that “I, myself, am not under the law”.

One of the most popular and authoritative commentaries on the Bible, The “Enduring Word” Biblical commentary, agrees in no uncertain terms on the subject of Jesus fulfilling the law that, and I quote, “The Christian is done with the law as a means of gaining a righteous standing before God.”

So, how does the Christian Repent?

I’m amazed at how many people don’t understand the concept that Christians don’t need to follow the Old Testament laws anymore. If this wasn’t a central part of Jesus, the disciples, Paul, and the early Christians message, we would never know about any of them. If Jesus or Paul had simply followed the laws and sacrifices of the Jews, instead of telling people they no longer held any authority, none of us would know their names and they would not even be a footnote in the history books. Instead, we find the greatest disruption to established power structures in history through these two men and their followers. The whole point of their message was that the old law was finished, and there is now a new law – the Law of Jesus Christ, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

It’s truly unbelievable to me that Messianic Judaism, the belief that you must belief in Jesus Christ and also follow the Torah laws is making a resurgence. It is offensive to God and totally misrepresents and misunderstands the meaning and purpose of Jesus’s life, death, and ministry, and the New Testament’s message. We have had this debate with people way too often, do not fall for this mis- or disinformation.

Instead of giving up a valuable sheep, goat, or ox, like the Old Testament Jews used to do, we must give up our sin. Back then, these concepts had to be spelled out in a simple, childish, and easily understandable way. You see, the Bible is many things - theology and history as well as the story of mankind’s development. When the Old Testament was written, we were in a more primitive state, a time without machines where slavery was rampant, and a law about when and how you could beat your slaves was actually a major milestone in human rights compared to the cultures around the Israelites.

Now, however, we are expected to be smarter, wiser, and more capable than those ancient people. We are expected to actually change our very behavior, which is often the hardest thing for a person to do.

Give up your sin and repent! Jesus STRONGLY preached a message of repentance, not a message of following the old law. He did not save the crippled man or the adulterous woman and tell them to go on and keep doing what they are doing, he told them to, “Go, and sin no more.”

John 8: 9-11:

· Jesus was left in the middle of the crowd with the woman. 10 Then Jesus stood up again and said to the woman, “Where are your accusers? Didn’t even one of them condemn you?”

· “No, Lord,” she said.

· And Jesus said, “Neither do I. Go and sin no more.”

John 5:

· Later Jesus found him at the temple and said to him, “See, you are well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.”

The ABCs of Salvation

A – Accept that you are a sinner in need of salvation and repentance

B – Believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God who died for your sins and rose again

C – Confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord

Once you understand these three easy steps, all you have to do is pray this simple prayer:

Dear God,

I am a sinner, a fallible human.

I accept the Lordship of your Son and Revelator, Jesus Christ.

I repent for my sins, and ask You to take charge of my life.

I want to follow Your commandments, but I can’t do it without you.

I confess with my mouth that I am Born Again and cleansed by the blood of Jesus;

And I declare myself a child of God, whose name is I AM, forever.

Amen.

Now, there is the odd situation where Step C, confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, is not required, such as the proverbial death bed conversion by someone who can’t talk, or the hypothetical person trapped alone in a sinking ship. As I said in my “Four Solae” sermon, you can be saved through Christianity without needing any other person or anything except your own mind.

However, for the vast majority of cases, you ARE obligated to confess your faith to other people, not a priest, but other people to fulfill the Great Commission. More on this in a minute.

The “ABCRs” of salvation doesn’t have quite the same ring to it when we add repentance, so maybe we can go with “ABCDs”: Accept, Believe, Confess, and Deny your sin or Deny yourself.

It’s starting to get a little clunky, which is why this ABCs of Salvation is just a rudimentary, child-level outline for those who are unfamiliar with Christianity. Don’t get too caught up in picking it apart.

Witness 2 wants to add that the next part is to actually follow and obey Jesus Christ, but that's for another sermon.

One thing we often must repent for is Witchcraft. Now, witchcraft is not only limited to things like witch doctors, fetish charms, curses, divination, sorcery, fortune telling, rituals, astral projection, etc. We can perform witchcraft without even realizing it, and passive aggressive, undercover witchcraft is all around us on a day-to-day basis. Let’s take a look at what Derek Prince, one of the greatest preachers of all time, has to say on the subject:

Manipulation is a behavior inherent in human nature, extending beyond just children to include mothers and fathers. Women often resort to manipulation as their primary means of control, while men may turn to intimidation. Regardless of the method used, the ultimate goal is to exert control over the other person.
For instance, if a wife doesn't get her way, she may resort to emotional outbursts, sabotaging meals, or making her husband's life difficult until he gives in. Conversely, it could be the husband employing a brutish approach, using his strength and temper to threaten and intimidate the family into submission.
In these scenarios, both parties aim to assert dominance, yet the underlying issues remain unresolved. Ideally, couples should openly communicate, pray together, and seek divine guidance to address their differences. However, manipulation sidesteps these real issues, preferring covert tactics to achieve personal objectives.
Manipulative behavior extends beyond the household and can be observed in various settings, even within church congregations. Take, for instance, a small Pentecostal congregation led by a young, inexperienced pastor. Two spiritually assertive individuals believe they know best how the church should operate. Instead of engaging in a constructive dialogue with the pastor, they claim divine revelation through speaking in tongues and interpreting messages to instruct him on what to do. This too is manipulation.
Manipulation isn't limited to personal relationships; it can infiltrate business dealings as well. Employers may manipulate their secretaries, and vice versa. While a comprehensive exploration of this topic isn't possible here, it's essential to recognize that manipulation is a deeply ingrained aspect of human nature, often manifesting as witchcraft—characterized by manipulation, intimidation, and domination. Recognizing these traits can help us confront and combat this destructive behavior.
What I’m talking about is something that’s natural to fallen man. This is witchcraft as a work of the flesh, and its three trademarks are manipulate, intimidate, and dominate. And I would like to say, wherever you encounter those things, behind them is the power of witchcraft.

You see, witchcraft can be as simple and ubiquitous as simply sitting around our houses in anger, thinking of ways to intimidate, abuse, or manipulate people.

Say you imagine a slight that someone said or did against you, and instead of merely forgiving, being the bigger person, moving on, not saying anything unless you have something nice to say, etc., you decide to sit down and write that person a rude message or sabotage their life in some manner to attempt to exert psychological control or abuse on them. That is witchcraft in its most common form, and it can do tremendous damage to your soul and put your salvation in jeopardy.

So, being a Christian comes with obligations and responsibilities. You must not only repent, but you must fulfill the Great Commission - to make disciples of all nations.

It’s not enough to sit around our houses, reading our Bibles, claiming divine special revelations, speaking in tongues, and praying for Christians. We must also go out and spread the Word of God, and this is the purpose of my sermons in the following two or three weeks when I intend to finish my series on apologetics.

It’s difficult to preach to strangers, but it’s absolutely necessary to get out of our comfort zones and echo chambers just like this one. You can’t just “preach to the choir”, you must go and spread the gospel to all nations. Americans aren’t exempt from this, if you aren’t doing this then you are failing in your duties as a Christian.

Every time Witness 2 and I go out, we try to find someone to talk to about the gospel. We also try to physically help with money if they are homeless too, as remember that we can’t just preach the word but not give food or comfort to those who desperately need it.

This is why I am going to give you the tools to do so in the following two or three weeks, using:

Deductive and inductive reasoning
Independent attestation
Historical/archeological evidence,
Fulfilled prophecy
Intertext ELS codes
Supernaturally advanced knowledge

There are good reasons to believe the Bible is true, and the evidence is on our side. While faith and personal experience are valid, however, they will not convince most people what you believe. Why should anyone take anyone else’s word for what they believe? Everyone has their own beliefs and opinions, and even a muslim or hindu can claim to have had supernatural experiences or powers without being able to prove it.

Unless you can call down fire from heaven or visibly perform supernatural signs and miracles that prove without a doubt you are speaking for God, you’re going to need to come up with something more convincing to the majority of people if you want to fulfill the Great Commission, as the only people who will be convinced by your personal testimony or claims of divine special revelation are those who already believe in it. You will never convert an atheist or desperate homeless person by telling them you just feel God’s presence or have experienced supernatural events with no proof.

So, in my following apologetics sermons I will continue giving you the tools that will empower you to carry out a different type of miracle- saving the unrepentant, unbelieving heart. It’s a difficult thing, especially in America as almost everyone has made up their minds about it already, but it is something that must be done. Witness 2 and I put a great deal of effort into it, and it’s something that can be done without a college degree, any tools, miracles, or anything supernatural. ANYONE can do this, all you need is the basic knowledge and the courage to put yourself out there and talk to people.

In fact, when the Bible is given a fair chance in an evidence-based debate, it wins every time. That’s why paying attention and remembering, or even asking us for written copies, of my following apologetics sermons over the following weeks is so important for those who call themselves pastors.

Closing Message:

EVERYONE NEEDS TO REPENT, NO MATTER HOW GOOD YOU THINK YOU ARE OR HOW MANY GOOD DEEDS YOU DO.

This is a non-negotiable of Christianity.

All your good deeds are like filthy rags to God, and no matter what you do, your soul is corrupted. This is true for every human being that has ever lived, except for Jesus who was also God, and it is true for each one of us in this room.

Remember, if you’re experiencing attacks or harassment in your life, that likely means that there are unrepentant sins or actions in your life. If you are struggling with attacks from Satan, demons, what you would describe as a conspiracy against you from witches, Freemasons, etc., that means that there is something you are incorrect about. False doctrine and beliefs, as well as not repenting or failing to carry out the Great Commission, can all lead you to a vulnerable state where there are cracks in your spiritual armor.

When you are right with God, there is very little that can be done to hurt you. Bad things might still happen, acts of chance will occur, you may even die in an accident if it’s your time.

However, if you listen to these words and follow them closely, you will be protected on some level. The Devil needs a way to get into and infiltrate your life, and unrepentant sin or false beliefs are the best way for him to do so.

Be very careful with your soul and salvation, as at the end of the day it is all you will ever have. All our possessions are meaningless, they will all crumble to dust one day, along with our very bodies.

At the end of time, only the soul remains. Choose wisely what you do with yours.

More Apologetics

Good morning, everybody. Today I want to continue my series on apologetics and the tools we need to convert the maximum number of people possible to Christianity.

One of the most important jobs for the Christian is to “Make disciples of all nations”, the commandment known as “the Great Commission”. In it, Jesus personally commissions us as officers in his army, and commands us to go out into the world preaching his message and helping to spread the Kingdom of God to as many hearts as possible.

While feeding the poor and taking care of children is important, this is another important aspect of being a Christian that should not be overlooked - the courage and skill to persuade, debate, and influence others that they should be Christian.

While arguing from personal experience and faith is valid and is still an important tool to use when trying to convert people, I will now give you more solid ways to prove that your faith in Christianity is justified, legitimate, and rational. I recommend that anyone listening who considers them a pastor, evangelist, or missionary will take notes on these, save them, and use them when they talk to someone who is struggling with their faith or is considering converting but just needs a final push over the epistemological ledge.

Since I have covered the deductive arguments presented here before, I will only briefly recap them without elaborating on the premises involved [note – see my book The More Rational Worldview, Section II, for elaboration on these premises].

Inductive reasoning involves starting from specific premises and forming a general conclusion, while deductive reasoning involves using general premises to form a specific conclusion.

Deductive Arguments

Remember that in these deductive arguments, if the premises are true then the conclusion must be true, as the conclusion contains no information that is not found in the premises.

The Cosmological Argument

1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause.

2. The universe began to exist.

3. Therefore, the universe has a cause.

The Teleological Argument from Design

1. The universe exhibits incredibly precise fine-tuning to sustain life.

2. This fine tuning is due to either chance, necessity, or design

3. It is not due to chance or necessity.

4. Every designed creation has a designer

5. Therefore, God exists

And finally,

The Argument from Objective Moral Values and Duties

1. If morality is objective and absolute, God must exist.

2. To state it another way: Without God, objective morals do not exist

3. Morality is objective and absolute, for example, it is definitively morally wrong to torture a child to death for fun.

4. Therefore, God exists.

Inductive arguments

Inductive reasoning is different from deductive reasoning in that a conclusion reached via inductive reasoning goes beyond the information contained within the premises. This means that while they are helpful and useful tools, inductive arguments are not necessarily true if their premises are true.

However, these arguments are often terminated with an incredibly incorrect assertion by the atheist that Jesus did not exist as a person. If that were true, it would invalidate all of these arguments. That’s why one of the most important first steps towards converting someone to Christianity is proving to them beyond a shadow of a doubt that Jesus was a real person. Additionally, we must prove that the Biblical text is reliable and has been passed down accurately.

Luckily, these issues aren’t a problem for the Christian, only the intellectually-dishonest atheist.

Let’s confirm this with an academic study, The Historical Jesus in Recent Research, by James Dunn, which states, “Today nearly all historians, whether Christians or not, accept that Jesus existed.”[1]

We can further confirm this, even from Bible critics and non-Christians, such as well-known secular agnostic New Testament scholar Bart Erhman, who stated, "He certainly existed, as virtually every competent scholar of antiquity, Christian or non-Christian, agrees."[2]

Even the Wikipedia article on the Historical Jesus admits that, “Virtually all scholars believe that a historical Jesus existed and attempts to deny his historicity have been consistently rejected by the scholarly consensus as a fringe theory.”[3]

Many of the followers of Jesus were involved with the early church. They would have noticed any discrepancies in the manuscripts, and any lies about the life of Jesus would have caused a large schism within the Church, which is not in the historical record. The New Testament was widely copied and translated into many languages during the first few decades following the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, and scholars have found around 23,000 manuscripts of the New Testament, far more than any other text from antiquity, in many languages.[4]

These manuscripts confirm that even when comparing biblical texts translated into a variety of languages, there are no differences in the text regarding theological doctrine or the basic facts of Jesus’ life. This widespread diffusion of the Scriptures means that anyone introducing any changes would have been detected, and denounced throughout the churches, and there exists a reliable canon, traceable and verifiable through textural criticism. Once the original Greek manuscript was translated into other languages between A.D. 60–70, it would have been impossible for anyone, even a corrupt church official, to impose a counterfeit text on the Christians of that era. We can see the care with which early church historians such as Jerome and Tertullian curated the manuscripts, carefully watching for forgeries and debating and cross checking each other’s manuscripts to maintain authenticity.[5] These undeniable historical facts underlie the accuracy and verifiability of the New Testament manuscripts.

A.T. Robertson, an authority on Greek, said the variation in the New Testament is about a “thousandth part of the entire text”, or about 99.9 percent accurate.[6]

Eminent British manuscript expert Sir Frederick Kenyon states that, “the interval between the dates of original composition and the earliest extant evidence becomes so small as to be in fact negligible, and the last foundation for any doubt that the Scriptures have come down substantially as they were written has now been removed.[7]

Even agnostic Bible critic Bart Ehrman admits that, “in fact, most of the changes found in early Christian manuscripts have nothing to do with theology or ideology. Far and away the most changes are the result of mistakes pure and simple-slips of the pen, accidental omissions, inadvertent additions, misspelled words, blunders of one sort of another.”[8]

Along with these manuscripts, historians have access to tens of thousands of letters that were composed by Christian writers in the first few centuries of this era. This was the main way that the Bible was transmitted throughout the Roman Empire, despite Roman persecution and destruction of the Scriptures. According to Professor J. Harold Greenlee, the quotations from what would become the New Testament are “so extensive that the New Testament could virtually be reconstructed from them without the use of New Testament manuscripts.”[9]

Let’s examine some further sources that can provide information regarding the accuracy and historicity of the New Testament.

A. N. Sherwin-White was a classical history scholar at Oxford University who studied evidence for and against the historical accuracy of the book of Acts. He stated the following, “For Acts the confirmation of historicity is overwhelming… any attempt to reject its basic historicity even in matters of detail must now appear absurd.”[10]

Eminent Biblical archeologist Dr. William F. Albright, wrote in 1955: “We can already say emphatically that there is no longer any solid basis for dating any book of the New Testament after circa A.D. 80.”[11]

William M. Ramsey was an archeologist and New Testament scholar, considered one of the leading authorities in the world on the history of Asia Minor and the study of the New Testament in the early 20thcentury. He famously started his academic journey hoping to disprove the New Testament narrative, but surprisingly, found so much evidence for it that he actually became a Christian.[12] Regarding the accuracy of the Gospels and the New Testament, he stated the following, “Luke is a historian of the first rank… this author should be placed along with the very greatest of historians”[13]

Colin Hemer was a classical scholar who specialized in New Testament studies. In his book, The Book of Acts in the Setting of Hellenistic History, he carefully evaluates and demonstrates the historicity of Acts in various ways, describing Acts as a “coherent and consistent product of its day”.[14]

The existence of Jesus as a historical figure who lived, breathed, and walked this Earth is perhaps the most well-established fact of all antiquity, the debate is conclusively settled, and there is not one serious academic, scholar, or historian who could genuinely tell you they don’t believe in the historicity of Jesus.

The empty tomb

The Romans and Jews were against the rise of early Christianity
Jesus’s tomb was in a known, public location that was easily accessible by all.
If they could have, the Roman and Jewish authorities would have simply displayed the body of Jesus for all to see and immediately ended the religion, and similarly, anyone wishing to debunk it could have visited Jesus’s tomb for themselves and seen the body.
All hypotheses to explain away the tomb problem by atheists have been debunked, i.e. fringe theories like Jesus didn’t really die on the cross or the disciples stole the body.
Christianity could have never risen the way it did without a legitimate empty tomb, and there are no plausible materialistic hypotheses.
Therefore, Jesus rose from the dead.

Now, you should be able to see the difference here - this is bottom up, inductive reasoning, drawing conclusions from the facts rather than facts from the conclusions.

It’s possible that this argument is incorrect, even if all the premises are true. However, it stands unrefuted and as long as no one can offer a plausible alternative explanation, the most logical conclusion is the one given - that Jesus was raised from the dead by God.

Some historians agree, such as the legendary New Testament scholar N.T. Wright, who stated, “As a historian, I cannot explain the rise of early Christianity unless Jesus rose again, leaving an empty tomb behind Him.”[15]

Jacob Kremer, an Austrian scholar, states, “By far most scholars hold firmly to the reliability of the empty tomb.”[16]

The appearances of Jesus

1. Different people and groups of people claimed to have seen Jesus after his death.

2. These appearances are either due to mental illness, dishonesty, or they really were a risen Jesus.

3. They were not due to mental illness or dishonesty.

4. Therefore, they were due to a risen Jesus Christ.

These claims are significant with historians worldwide agreeing, such as, New Testament critic Gerd Ludemann, who stated, “It may be taken as historically certain that Peter and the disciples had experiences after Jesus’s death in which Jesus appeared to them as the risen Christ.”[17]

Bart Erhman, secular Bible critic, states:

That Jesus’ followers (and later Paul) had resurrection experiences is, in my judgment, a fact. What the reality was that gave rise to the experiences I do not know… Paul’s tradition that 500 people saw Jesus at the same time has led some people to suggest that Jesus’ followers suffered mass hysteria. But mass hysteria does not explain the other traditions.”[18]

There are no plausible naturalistic hypotheses for these sightings of Jesus. Attempts to explain them away as mass hysteria or hallucinations are ruled out, as hallucinations cannot be shared, and they cannot be experienced as the same by different people. Hallucinations or delusions from mental illness can seem very real, but nothing in the literature of psychology indicates that they can be experienced by multiple people in exactly the same way.

Similarly, explaining the Bible away as a vast conspiracy of 40 different authors over 1,600 years or so lacks plausibility and sufficient explanatory scope on many different levels.

Therefore, most likely explanation for the multiple appearances of Jesus to different groups of people, including friends, skeptics like Thomas, and enemies like Saul or Paul alike, is that Jesus was raised from the dead.

The transformation of the disciples and the rise of early Christianity

1. When Jesus was killed, none of the disciples were willing to die for their faith.

2. After the appearances of Jesus, the disciples, and even people who had previously rejected Jesus’s claims like his brother James, came to believe so strongly that God had raised Jesus from the dead that they were willing to die for those beliefs, a complete 180-degree transformation from who they were before.

3. The only explanations for these new-found, un-Jewish beliefs in a risen Christ is either an organized conspiracy, a mass deception/delusion, or a truly risen Christ.

4. These beliefs were not due to an organized conspiracy or mass deception/delusion

5. Therefore, the most likely explanation for the new-found conviction and willingness to die for their beliefs of the disciples is a truly risen Christ.

This is explicitly spelled out in the gospels and Acts, in which we find even his most loyal disciples denying that they knew him, like Peter’s infamous threefold nightly betrayal. After his death but before his appearances we find a huddled group of frightened cowards, unwilling to face their oppressors after losing their leader.

The disciple’s new-found belief in Jesus was a remarkably un-Jewish idea, as no one in Jewish history had ever heard of a dying messiah, much less a resurrected one. They were expecting a great military leader, who would overthrow the Romans and set up the Messianic Kingdom of David on Earth.

Pentecost was not just a spiritual event, it precipitated a distinct and profound change to the very being of the apostles themselves.

Paul is a great example of this. There is no good explanation for a so-called “Pharisee born of Pharisees”, a true believer in the judgements of the Sanhedrin courts working to find, kill, and imprison Christians to suddenly throw all of that away and spend the rest of his life arguing with everyone, being imprisoned, and eventually being killed for his beliefs except a truly risen Christ. The same argument extends to the rest of the disciples.

There is no plausible motive for a mass conspiracy in which all members end up poor, in jail, and dying. Interpreting the Bible as a conspiracy selectively edited to deceive the future readers is an incorrect way to read it.

Similarly, it’s hard to imagine how someone 2,000 years ago could have pulled off a deception that could have convinced so many people that they saw a risen Christ.

When we review Jewish religious-cultural expectations at the time, we see no indication of a Messiah that would be humiliatingly crucified as a common criminal. Furthermore, Jewish beliefs at the time prohibited anyone from rising from the dead until Judgment Day. In fact, Jesus’ death had apparently verified the claims of blasphemy made against him, and revealed him as a fraud to the masses. Yet somehow, out of nowhere, this large group of people, including the disciples, their families, and other followers of Jesus, began to believe that Jesus had risen from the dead- so strongly that many of them, and many more people after them, died for their belief.

In the book, The Resurrection of Jesus, historian Michael R. Licona states:

After Jesus’ death, the disciples endured persecution, and a number of them experienced martyrdom. The strength of their conviction indicates that they were not just claiming Jesus had appeared to them after rising from the dead. They really believed it. They willingly endangered themselves by publicly proclaiming the risen Christ.[17]

Many more people well within living memory of the events described in the Gospels and those who personally knew those who did went on to die horrific deaths as well, in the inferno of irrational madness wreaked upon the early Church by the Roman Empire.

Today, we covered just the first part, arguments using deductive and inductive reasoning. In future weeks we will cover the rest, and by the end your faith will be like the rock that Jesus talked about, instead of shifting sand that is easily washed away by passing waves.

By strengthening the foundations of your faith, you will be less easily swayed by the fallen world around you, the actions of sinful people, and thoughts or actions that offend God.

There could be someone here, right now, in this very meeting, whose faith is not strong, and who needs these arguments to bolster it.

The atheist has no response to these arguments. If you ask them to fill in the conclusion to each of these premises, you will get a conspiracy theory at best and a cynical joke at worst.

You will also be able to evangelize more effectively and provide people with the spiritual food they need. Knowledge or proof of supernatural authorship of the Bible is available for all people and anyone can understand the simple concepts I have laid out and will lay out in the future.

Now, I understand that in many countries, simply offering a hungry person a plate of food and sitting with them to show them love and compassion is a far more effective means of evangelizing than trying to debate them.

Obviously, you must know when and how to use these arguments. Having multiple methods of preaching to people is ideal, so you can simply share the love and generosity of Jesus Christ with the poor but also be able to defend yourself against those who are more aggressively anti-Christian or who need a different approach.

I could present these arguments to a typical atheist scientific believer, and many have. Having watched almost all of them, I can sum up the rebuttals to my arguments.

The truly difficult questions, such as “why does anything exist at all”, go completely out the window. The scientists answers on the origins of life and the universe as being out of nothing for no reason at all leave more questions than answers and fail to satisfy the questions that are posed.

The historical arguments about Jesus are also not addressed. Rather, the atheist will either attack the actions of those claiming to be Christians, the Bible itself, or some aspect of Christian Theology, often appealing to supposed contradictions they claim to find. These contradictions, when examined more closely, fail to provide compelling reasons to disbelieve the Bible and are always easily explained or refuted.

What they can never do, on the other hand, is build their own, similarly plausible, worldview to stand in competition with this one. An atheist or scientist cannot construct a coherent and cohesive narrative that is able to answer any question and explain the obvious and incomprehensibly complex and finely-tuned, designed, nature of the universe.

When it comes to religion and theology, only Christianity offers a promising route to salvation for mankind. Other spiritual paths are easily debunked, never so much critically examined as followed only out of a sense of cultural flow.

Only Christianity can stand up to the harshest critic without bending. You can choose to reject Christianity, but it will only be because you don’t like it. There’s no good, logical, or rational reason why it can’t be true, unless you simply choose to reject belief in the supernatural or anything beyond your immediate perceptions.

Moreover, there is also anecdotal evidence, or personal experience. As I covered a few weeks ago, this is a form of psychological qualia, or subjective experience that can’t be fully known or experienced by another person.

The atheist has the right to reject this type of evidence, but this is a precarious, dangerous, and untenable worldview. There are millions of people with personal experiences with Jesus Christ’s power, and many people even consider this the most compelling reason to believe in the Bible, with good reason, as this is a powerful reason to believe.

Simply dismissing all these personal experiences with the supernatural is absurd, and yet that is what the atheist or materialist must to do maintain their beliefs.

I find that, contrary to what the atheist might expect, if you really examine it closely, there are far more credible reports of supernatural experiences involving Jesus Christ than any other religion, faith, or worldview, such as Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, etc.

So, when it comes to your eternal soul - make your choice wisely.

We have only just begun to scratch the surface of the ocean of good reasons to believe that the Bible is the Word of God. In fact, it’s so obvious that it simply speaks of its own truth to billions of people worldwide, who need no such arguments as these to recognize the inherent authenticity and honesty within the test, and the inhuman nature of the text.

However, the commissioned job of the Christian is to convince those who don’t yet believe that the Bible could be true. Maybe they just need to be convinced, and maybe you can save their soul.

The universe without the Bible is monstrous, and mankind is doomed without Jesus Christ’s promise of redemption and ultimate destruction of evil and all who practice it.

Combine these discussions with tender care, loving kindness, and compassion for those who need it the most, along with the deep magic of Christianity - feeding the poor, caring for the sick, housing the orphan, and visiting the prisoner.

Then, you will be armed with the Sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, and the powerful knowledge of the truth and the ability to wield it to defend and promote your beliefs. This will enable you to carry out the great commission and make disciples of all nations.

So, and this is where I want to close, being a Christian comes with obligations and responsibilities. You must not only repent, but you must fulfill the Great Commission - to make disciples of all nations.

Now, I understand, as I said, that people living in poverty, destitution, and desperation will not always care about these arguments, or want to hear about them. After all, it’s difficult to care about the origins of the universe or the facts of the resurrection of Jesus when your family is hungry and you need a roof over your head.

However, there will be some people who do care about this, and some who are interested in a debate. Humanity has a universal trait of wanting to talk about where we came from, where we are going, and the purpose of our existence.

Use this to your advantage. The best preachers have multiple modalities - they can preach from the Power of the Holy Spirit, from repentance, from strong messages of Jesus’s overwhelming power and love, but also from these rational points of view.

You must be able to defend your beliefs against those who would attack them if you want to be a successful preacher, and these arguments and the other apologetica I will provide for you will give you the tools to do so.

For example, we saw today that [member of our real-life ministry] got a new loudspeaker [primarily due to donations from readers like you], which he and his church will use to preach.

That’s great, we love to see things like that. Maybe you can try setting it up, proclaiming to have the answers to life’s biggest questions, and inviting those around you to debate these premises.

One thing you could also do is to find someone who disagrees with you and set up an actual debate with pre planned times for arguments and responses. This is an excellent way to draw a crowd in and get more people interested in what you have to say. If you listen closely to what I say, you will find that the atheist will not be able to provide any of their own arguments, they will merely attack yours, which you will then be able to defend with your knowledge of the Bible and its reliability.

God bless you all.

God offers hope.

Hope is essential; it’s given great credence by Paul in the Bible, listen among faith and love as the greatest and most important virtues of all. People can live without many things, but living without hope is nearly impossible. In our world today, many billions of people have lost hope, leading to despair-driven behaviors, sin, false beliefs, and disastrous consequences to the life of the individual.

People are turning to astrology, spiritual mediums, and even computers or AI to give them hope, or fulfill the roles of God like predicting the future and guiding humanity. The widespread feeling these days is one of hopelessness and helplessness, akin to a drowning man struggling underwater.

Now, I want to share a passage from the Bible that emphasizes four important aspects of hope, which we believe describes the very time we are living in today. In Luke 21, we read:

"And there shall be signs in the sun and in the moon and in the stars, and upon the Earth, distress of nations with perplexity, the sea and the waves roaring, men's hearts failing them for fear and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth, for the powers of heaven shall be shaken. And then shall they see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, look up with hope, and lift up your heads for your redemption draws near."

The four aspects from this passage are:

Wonder: We must understand the state of the world and wonder why these signs are unfolding.
Watch: We are called to watch and be prepared, not living in fear but with hope.
Wait: We should look forward to the future with hope, knowing that God's promises will be fulfilled.
Win: Ultimately, victory is assured through the return of Christ. We must be ready, surrendered to Him, and serving Him.

Remember hope is in Christ, and His return is a source of great hope for believers. As we navigate the challenges of the world, let us remember that our ultimate victory is assured through faith in Him.

How is this victory through Jesus Christ achieved?

Like all of us here, I can always apply these guiding principles to my own life, and we can all always do better. However, the important part is to try your best and put in a genuine, good-faith effort. Trust in God with all your heart, mind, and soul, and he will shine his light upon you. Pray, trust, and treat others as you should treat an image-bearer of God. Each human carries the image of God stamped upon their soul, and a soul-bearing human being is the most precious and wonderful part of all God’s creation, worth more to him than all the billions of galaxies combined.

Christianity offers great hope, and I wanted to share some of it today instead of my usual darker sermons. I hope that you all found this uplifting, inspiring, and encouraging. The concept of hope is also why I offer my apologetics in other sermons, as having good reasons to believe the Bible rationally is a good foundation for faith, which is the best source of hope in the world. The answer of why I bother preaching basic apologetics is found in Jesus’s metaphor of the house builders on sand and on the rock.

If your faith is built on sand, it can be washed away at the slightest wave, or bad event that happens in your life. However, if you have a robust, firm, well-established faith where you can give multiple good reasons why you believe the Bible, your faith will be able to withstand many tests.

You will also, as I said, be able to carry out the Great Commission to make disciples of all nations more effectively, which is one of, if not the most, important job that we have as Christians.

To wrap all of this up - Our hope is in blood. The blood of Christ, shed on the cross.

But, another type of blood too. We hope for the destruction of evil, and salvation of the good, and the Bible lays out clearly how blood will lead to the fulfillment of this hope.

In Revelation 19, we read:

The Rider on a White Horse

Then I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse! The one sitting on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war. His eyes are like a flame of fire, and on his head are many diadems, and he has a name written that no one knows but himself. He is clothed in a robe dipped in blood, and the name by which he is called is The Word of God. And the armies of heaven, arrayed in fine linen, white and pure, were following him on white horses. From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron. He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty. On his robe and on his thigh he has a name written, King of kings and Lord of lords.
Then I saw an angel standing in the sun, and with a loud voice he called to all the birds that fly directly overhead, “Come, gather for the great supper of God, to eat the flesh of kings, the flesh of captains, the flesh of mighty men, the flesh of horses and their riders, and the flesh of all men, both free and slave, both small and great.” And I saw the beast and the kings of the earth with their armies gathered to make war against him who was sitting on the horse and against his army. And the beast was captured, and with it the false prophet who in its presence[e] had done the signs by which he deceived those who had received the mark of the beast and those who worshiped its image. These two were thrown alive into the lake of fire that burns with sulfur. And the rest were slain by the sword that came from the mouth of him who was sitting on the horse, and all the birds were gorged with their flesh.

The hope that this blood portends is the destruction of evil. This event is the parallel feast to the Wedding Supper of the Lamb, the Feast of Carrion Birds, happening simultaneously in the immediately preceding section to this. The “Winepress of the fury of the Wrath of God” is meant to harvest blood from the Earth the same way we harvest juices from fruit, described in Revelation 14 as producing a sea of blood from Mystery Babylon as high as a horses bridle for approximately 184 miles.

This is the ultimate dichotomy of God – what type of blood will cover you? The blood of Christ at the Wedding Supper of the Lamb, or the blood of the feast of carrion birds?

The ultimate, final hope of mankind is found in Revelation 22, the last excerpt I will read today:

The New Heaven and the New Earth

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”
And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I make all things new.” Also he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.” And he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment. The one who conquers will have this heritage, and I will be his God and he will be my son. But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.”

If this doesn’t come true, mankind is doomed. Without the Bible’s vision of redemption and hope for humanity, we are nothing more than a disturbed, psychopathic primate, doomed individually and collectively to death and obscurity after a short, tumultuous existence during which there was not one single day where we were not at war with each other.

The end of Revelation offers an incredible vision. I’m so glad it exists, without Revelation there would be a massive hole at the end of the Bible. Revelation offers us the ultimate panacea to humanity’s problems, our home, our real lives, and the love that each of us has always been searching for and never seeming to find. For the life of me, I can’t figure out why churches seemingly refuse to touch Revelation with a ten-foot pole. It’s the best book there, to me, and ever since I was a child I have been fascinated with how utterly alien, strange, awe-inspiring, and terrible the vision is. Terrible in the sense of Ivan the Terrible – so unimaginably powerful and destructive that all you can do is "be afraid, be in fear, or revere.” – the Biblical definition of terrible.

However, there’s only one way to get there, and there’s a risk of missing out given in the Bible as well.

So I will ask again – is your name written in the Book of Life? Are you sure? If you aren’t, or you don’t know what you must do to be saved, please let us know and we will do what we can to help you.

Thank you and I hope you all enjoyed this sermon; however, next week I will be returning to my apologetics series as I do feel that it is very important to provide all of the reasons to believe the Bible is true to our members here.

God bless you all.

-Witness 1

[1] https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/j.ctv1bxh2pk

[2] Ehrman, Bart, Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth, 2012, Harper Collins, 0062089943, 9780062089946

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_Jesus

[4] https://seanmcdowell.org/blog/what-is-the-most-recent-manuscript-count-for-the-new-testament

[5] https://www.tertullian.org/fathers/jerome_preface_pauls_letters.htm

[6]Geisler, Norman L., Christian Apologetics, 2013, Baker Books, 1441245812, 9781441245816

[7]Sir Frederic Kenyon, "The Bible and Archaeology" (New York: Harper, 1940) p. 288

[8]Erhman, Bart, Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why, 2005, Harper Collins, 0060738170, 9780060738174

[9] Greenlee, Harold, 1964, Introduction to New Testament Textual Criticism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans)

[10]Sherwin-White, A.N., Roman Society and Roman Law in the New Testament: The Sarum Lectures 1960-1961, 2004, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 1592447473, 9781592447473, p. 189

[11]William F Albright, Recent Discoveries in Biblical Lands (new York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1955), p. 136

[12] Ramsay, St. Paul the Traveller and the Roman Citizen, 1904, Putnam and Sons, p. 8.

[13]William M. Ramsay, The Bearing of Recent Discovery on the Trustworthiness of the New Testament, London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1915, p. 222

[14]Hemer, Colin, The Book of Acts in the Setting of Hellenistic History, Pennsylvania State University Press, 1990

0931464587, 9780931464584

[15]N.T. Wright, The New, Unimproved Jesus, Christianity Today, September 13, 1993), p. 26

[16] Jacob Kremer, Die Osterevangelien-Geschichten um Geschichte (Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1977), pp. 49-50

[17]Gerd Ludemann, What Really Happened to Jesus?, trans. John Bowden, Westminster John Knox Press, 1995, p. 8

[18] Ehrman, B. 1999. Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium. p. 230-231.

Part 2 Reader Compilation Posts:

Thank you to all readers for your input and thoughtful responses. Some of the best email responses and discussion we have received are below.

Hi guys,

What I do is nothing compared to what the two of you do and provide for so many. Know that you are loved well by the Lord your God, he cherishes you and prospers you every single day. He guides your hands and your footsteps even in the darkest of hours. For those who love Him, those he protects. He loves you both with a Love that never fades, or fails, even in the most bleak of circumstances. Instead of me asking you what to write about, I'll add here some thoughts that I've had after thinking about our last conversation (feel free to call me at any time you have available, even if it is just to rant at things going on in the day to day, I know that I find relief in it when things get too stressful for me), though they might not be that profound or helpful, maybe they might give you some ideas or help you. And if you find anything that needs to be addressed, please let me know. I would rather be corrected and deal with that pain then not know that I was wrong and continue in my folly.

When we talked about helping others, especially men, I started to think about what I had done, to find peace with the events going on in the world, and find joy in my day to day. So here are a couple of things that might help others as advice, though it might not apply in all circumstances.

Stop going on 4chan or similar sites once you feel that you are not learning anything else that is useful from them. At this point it becomes a waste of time on things that could rather be spent doing more wholesome/useful things for both yourself and for God.

[Note from Witness 1: For anyone who believes us, simply posting a link to our site, writings, or blogs in a thread on 4chan is the #1 way you can help us. This is primarily all I use the site for these days, as the site is a pathetic shadow of what it once was]

2. Read your bible more. I would challenge everyone who has not read the bible from cover to cover to read as many chapters per day as you can, and ask God to give you a hunger and thirst for His Word that cannot be quenched.

[Another note from Witness 1: To read the whole Bible in one year, read 3.25 chapters per day, or 3 days of 3 and one day of 4 chapters, and thanks for your excellent advice]

3. Stop reading/watching the news, it is all fear porn at this point (though I would not say the economic stuff is not important enough to keep tracks on, as that drives this world more than the rest of it, just do not start worshiping money)

4. Stop watching garbage, anything that you watch/read/consume with everything but your mouth is food for your mind, you are what you eat and all that.

5. Stop comparing yourself to others in every little way. In height, in weight, in righteousness, in faith, in communion with God. It is not healthy or helpful in the long run if you overdo it, do not judge lest you be judged.

6. Tithe, the biggest one, what you do with your money is a great sign of where your heart lies. God loves you so much that he gave His Son, something that is priceless and of immeasurable value, just so He could have you as His child, what do you give Him?

7. Pray, all the time, in everything, for he does hear us. And through that He is faithful and true to help us when it is according to His will.

8. Trust Him, in all things, for good or for ill He is with us. Fear nothing that the enemies do, for God protects you when you trust Him.

Know that your God loves you all dearly, that He protects you in ways that you cannot even comprehend. Do not fear, for the Lord your God is with you.

To close out, here is a testimony of some healing that God did for me last night.

Around 2 in the morning I woke up finding it hard to breath, now I have asthma (though I believe God has healed me of it after last night), so I was not that panicked though I was concerned as I did not have any of my medicine as I was at my parents house last night. I live close by but I figured that I would ask God to heal me and fix my lungs. So as I prayed and asked for healing and deliverance, I found that my breathing was getting better (if still a bit uncomfortable), which made me pray all the harder, and after some time I was back to normal. I also fought against what was most likely a demon that was causing it too, which God delivered me from too. God does have the power to heal, and if you ask and trust Him, He will do it for you, you only need faith.

I would like to thank you for the word that you wrote yesterday, I found it very keyed to the situation and circumstances (I no longer believe in coincidences) as I was talking to my mom about tithing and money the day before, then you put your article out (I know that I have some idols, and I'll keep praying for God to help me with them), and then today I decided to go to church for the first time in a long time and the sermon there was talking about tithing, with the pastor pointing out that we can give all we have to Jesus and God, but when He asks for our money we freak out and say "hmmmmm.... how about no". Put some good points together about Malachi (first time there, but it seems to be ok based off of the sermon that the guy gave, we will see, pray for me to have discernment in this matter if you would be so kind, so I do not get deceived). I feel that God really wants people to know and keep in mind how they spend their money, especially now that things are going to get bad (read: worse) with the economy (even more so now than ever).

Regardless, thank you for everything, may God bless you in Jesus Christ's Name, and may both of you guide many, many others to the Glorious Light of Salvation. All Honor, Praise, and Glory to Jesus, the writer of our Salvation.

I love you both, and have a good rest of your night, and I pray to our Father for a good week ahead.

-Drew

Just to note, we want to give a HUGE SHOUT-OUT to Drew. Drew is truly walking in Christ, and though no man is perfect, he truly desires to be one with God. We have talked to him many times - he never complains, loves and takes care of his family, and he is generous, patient, and kind. He truly exhibits the qualities of a strong man of God. We cannot thank him enough for what he has done for us and our ministry, and we pray God multiplies his blessings daily for the rest of his life in Jesus's name!

Anonymous A's Wise Words:

It's already happened economically. Search "dollar supply contracting". Remember I told you the economy crashed. It takes awhile in the macro economic realm to start seeing and feeling. Economically it's over and if all your hope is in the shekels it will be worse.

Economist argue about everything but a contracting dollar is not something many economist argue about. It's pretty black and white. In the realm of food. If there is less potatoes this season than last then we eat less. Problem with the dollar or potatoes is that if you have to exert more energy to get the dollar it is a double loss. Hang on to your hat. This one is going to be a doozy. Glad Ukraine is taken care of. At least I can use my virtue as a currency. https://www.usdebtclock.org/

Not only do we agree with A, but we want to give him a huge shout-out, as well, for all he has done for us. A is a man with incredible generosity, fearlessness, and wisdom. Though he doesn't see himself this way, we do. A has trust in God, which takes courage, and we can't thank him enough. Thank you and we pray your family is blessed immensely and infinitely for all you have done for us.

Developing Mindfulness of God - Roger

Please check out Roger's new section on our website**! Congratulations, Roger.**

Is God on your mind? How often? 10 minutes of the day? An hour? All the time?

Our sister Witness 2 spoke recently about serving God with our whole heart, having no other gods before Him. We know there is only one God, we believe in Him. But we can still place other things ahead of Him in our lives, and these things become idols. Money, or our job. A loved one. Our own comfort. These things are good on their own, but when they become the focus of our lives, to the exclusion of God – even to the point that we find ourselves focused on them more than Him – then we must reexamine our priorities and repent. God wants to be our center. Our highest priority. Our only God.

How do we find a balance? How do we still have things in our lives that we care about and devote time and thought to, but with God first and foremost? Well, I'm far from perfect, and I need to work on this as much as anybody, but I know where to start. I have three steps for you to get started.

The first step is prayer. We need to pray. Prayer is more than just asking God for things. It's spending time that is devoted just to Him. I know this sounds silly to a lot of people, but most of us don't really know how to pray. We might think “I say the Our Father every night” or “I asked Jesus to forgive me for my sins just yesterday.” That's good, but it's only the very beginning.

Seek to spend time with God, the way you would seek to spend time with a beloved family member. Isn't God someone you want in your life? A loving Father? Treat Him like one. Now, you can't call Him up on your cell phone the way you might call up your mom or your dad. But you can speak to Him, even if you're not used to hearing his voice.

Devote some time; it doesn't really matter how much, as long as it's your own time and you won't be interrupted. Make sure you have somewhere peaceful and quiet. In Matthew, chapter 6, Jesus talks about going into your closet and praying in secret. Now, in this passage He's talking about humility, contrasting with the hypocrisy of praying openly in order to look holy to others.

But why were they hypocrites? They were focused on how they looked to other people. They weren't focused on God. Their illusion of holiness, their reputation, was their idol. So pray in secret in order to focus on God. Pray somewhere quiet so you won't be interrupted by anything. Leave all of your other priorities behind, for a little while. Give this time to God, alone.

That doesn't mean you can't pray in church, or in a group. Or in your head throughout the day. All of that is good, as long as you're really focused on God, on speaking with Him, and spending that time with Him! But since we can't always focus fully on God all the time, start by setting aside this quiet time, alone, with just you and Him.

Normally, when I pray, there's lots of things I want to ask for. And it's good to bring our concerns to God. But let's try something a little different. Start this time by just saying something like:

“I'm here, God.”

“I'm here to talk to You.”

“I want to spend my time with You.”

God isn't some impersonal force. God is our Father. He is the fully human and fully Divine Jesus Christ. He is the Holy Spirit who is in us and present with us. You can talk to Him like a person.

“You matter to me, God. I want You to be in my life. I want to be closer to You than anyone else in my life.”

You don't have to use my words. These are just the words flowing from my heart, in the desire to be closer to God. You can use them, or your own words, as your heart expresses them. But go to God with the intention and desire to get closer to Him, to spend time with Him like you would with someone you love.

Imagine being embraced by the person you love most in the world, whoever that is, and the feeling you have when you're just spending time with them. That's what being in God's loving presence is like. Ask God to let you feel his loving presence. God loves you more than you can imagine. We don't always feel it, because we are separated from Him by our sins, and everything we put ahead of Him in our lives. But the closer we get to Him, the more we can feel his loving presence. And if you've ever felt it, you know what I'm talking about – how wonderful it is to know you are loved by God! If you haven't felt it yet, don't worry! God still loves you! He wants to show you how much. Give Him the chance, by spending time with Him.

You can talk to God about anything you want during this time, as long as you're talking to God and focused on Him. You can ask for healing. You can pray for your friends and loved ones. You can pray for the people in the world who need help. You can pray for help with your struggles in this life, and for deliverance from the sins that you've been struggling with. There's no limitations, because God can do anything, and He knows everything already. There's just one more thing I'm going to recommend you do with that time you spend with God: thank Him.

Thank God for who He is, and for everything He does. God does a million things a day we never even know about, because He's defending us from evil and ordering our steps. We know He created us. He gave us life. He made us in His image, which is a blessing beyond measure. He gave us his Son, and died for us. He gave us a path to forgiveness, salvation and eternal life. He is the source of all good things. Even the challenges that we hated going through at the time - or that we're going through right now - but that make us stronger in the end, come from God. So try to think of all the good things, all the blessings, that God gives you. And then thank Him. Not out of obligation, but really let the happiness, the joy, of all the good things in your life fill your heart, and then thank God for that joy.

As you develop your prayer life, you'll find it gets easier. Prayer is hard to get started, especially if we don't feel close to God at first. But it's how we get closer to Him. You can't build a relationship with someone if you don't spend any time with them. As your relationship develops, you'll find you want to spend more time with God, and that's the beginning of mindfulness.

What is “mindfulness?” Well, there are a lot of definitions you can find on the internet, but the most basic explanation is “being aware of one's own thoughts and feelings without directly thinking about them.” Mindfulness of God, then, is keeping God in mind, in your thoughts and feelings, without conscious effort. Or to put it another way, living in the presence of God. If God is always present in your mind, then no matter what else you're doing, you're worshiping God. You have no idols before Him. This, I believe, is what Paul calls for in I Thessalonians 5:17: “Pray without ceasing.”

Now, I haven't mastered this. I'm just getting started. But I want to go further, because I want to get closer to God. I hope you do, too. I mentioned three steps, and I've talked about one. The next one is, read the Bible.

To have the Word of God in you, you need to know it. You need to read the Word. Don't think of this as a homework assignment. Don't think of this as a chore. That's why this is the second step. When you can pray out of a desire to know God personally and have Him in your life, you have that experience of God's loving presence. That's going to lead you to want to know Him more.

Imagine someone you wanted to marry gave you their life's story. You love this person, you want to spend the rest of your life with them. Don't you want to know them better? Don't you want to know the things that were so important in their life they wrote a book about them? Wouldn't you read that book? Especially if he or she wanted to sit down with you and read it together?

You're going to spend the rest of eternity with God. You're getting married to Him. You already know He loves you, and now you're learning how to love Him. So put some time aside and read his book. He wants to read it along with you, and help you really get it. So ask for Him to be with you and read with you, in the Holy Spirit. Ask Him to help you to understand it and internalize it, so it can become a part of you.

The things you see become a part of your mind. The eyes are the window to the soul. That's one reason that pornography and violent media are so dangerous – you can't see those things without being affected by them. But if bad things can become part of our psyche, then so can good things. And God's Word is the best thing we can put into our minds. Once it's there, it's part of you and it will affect the way you think. You can let it affect the way you act. You can become closer to God, just by reading His Word and letting it become a part of what you think and do. And the Holy Spirit is there to help along the way, with guidance to not memorize but rather internalize – to incorporate the Spirit of the Word into your own spiritual being: your soul. That's the next step to mindfulness.

So we pray, devoting time solely to God. We may pray quietly throughout the day, during our other tasks and activities. We try to get a personal relationship with God. We read the Bible along with the Holy Spirit, so God's Word will be in us. What else can we do to get even closer to God? Well, it's been talked about a lot here already, but here it is again: we can fast.

Now, the how of fasting has been covered pretty extensively already. But I want to go a little bit into the why of fasting, in the context of godly mindfulness. We already know that all the heroes of the Bible fasted. Jesus Himself fasted in the desert for 40 days. And if nothing else, since we want to be closer to Jesus and be like Him, we can fast to emulate Him. But it helps to know a little about why He fasted, and Moses and Daniel before Him.

When Moses fasted, he was in a state of total humility and submission before God. God called him up to Mount Sinai and gave him the Ten Commandments. During this time, Moses had to be utterly obedient and utterly pure. I've already talked about how blessed we are, that we can approach God without risking death, because Jesus changed our relationship with God and sent us the Holy Spirit. Moses didn't have that blessing. He and the rest of God's people still had to learn that God is set apart, He is holy.

So when we fast, we're remembering that God is holy. That we might need to suffer a little bit to approach Him, even if it's only a tiny fraction of what Jesus, or even Moses, suffered. Moses went without food or water for 40 days, and he did this at least twice. If we tried that, we would die. But Moses was sustained by God, and that's another takeaway. When we fast, we're putting ourselves, in a small way, into God's hands. We know God will sustain us. He is our provider.

Think about it. If you were starving, could you fast? No, you'd be too desperate to risk it, because if you didn't eat whatever you could, whenever you could, you might die. But you're not desperate, because God has provided for your needs. Either with a job, or a caretaker, or some kind of charity, you have enough food to get by. So when you fast, you have to acknowledge that you can afford to do so. You won't die (probably) because you have enough food to go hungry for a day or two and not starve to death as a result. Whenever you break your fast, there will be something there to keep you going.

So fasting is a sign of faith, that God will keep us going when we're hungry, and provide for us when we break our fast. It can also be a sign of thanks to God, for giving us that provision. And when we're fasting, we can devote the time we might otherwise put towards preparing and eating meals, towards prayer and reading the Bible, spending even more time with God. That time will feel different, because you'll feel different. You'll feel like you've really set that time apart, out of a desire to know God. And God knows when you do things for Him. He takes notice, and He cares. You may find that He feels a little closer when you fast and pray and read the Bible, than when you do any of those things alone.

Daniel fasted in a different way – he limited the things he ate to just vegetables and water, and he did so for a long period of time. This was to avoid eating anything ritually unclean – remember, before Jesus changed our relationship with God, his people had to follow strict laws about what foods they could or couldn't eat – laws that Daniel's Babylonian captors didn't know or care about. We don't need to follow those laws anymore because Jesus declared those foods clean for us, in order to demonstrate his power to make the unclean, clean and holy. In the same way Jesus can make non-Kosher foods clean to eat, He can wash away our sins and make us spiritually clean to enter God's presence in Heaven!

But Daniel didn't have that option. He had to keep Kosher to be obedient to God. And we can fast to remember that being obedient to God takes a little bit of sacrifice, now and then. We don't have to avoid specific foods because of the great blessing Jesus gave us – but we can thank Him for that blessing by remembering that it exists, and that God's people lived by His laws for thousands of years beforehand. We can remember that Jesus Christ made us clean in spirit, when we “clean up” what's in our bodies and deny ourselves for a little while.

Daniel fasted again when he was trying to understand a vision of the end times, and mourning what he saw. For three weeks he fasted, and then an angel came to him to explain the vision. Well, we're in those end times now, and it's appropriate to mourn by fasting. We can pray to understand the times we're currently in, the same way Daniel prayed to understand his vision. So it would make sense to fast like Daniel did, if we want that understanding. I'm not saying an angel will come and make everything clear to you. But fasting has always been a way that God's people have used to get closer to Him. If nothing else, that's what all of these examples have in common.

Jesus wandered into the desert specifically to face temptation. Jesus had to be tempted. If there was no opportunity for Him to sin, then his sinlessness wouldn't matter – in the same way our choices wouldn't matter if God didn't give us free will. And He faced temptation from the devil himself! Imagine if Satan, in the flesh, was our personal tempter! How awful would that be? Jesus had to deal with that, and at his weakest, after fasting 40 days in the barren wasteland. And He still triumphed. He beat the devil, handily.

We can fast to remind ourselves that we can triumph over temptation, too. Remember the first thing the devil tempted the Lord with: “If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread.” We can't turn stones to bread, but we can easily microwave something from the freezer in a way just as astounding to the people of Jesus's time [Note from Witness 1: Great take here, really interesting comparison. This should be elaborated on]. Any time we are hungry, we have the power to feed ourselves at a moment's notice. At the slightest whim.

But Jesus replied, “It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” That's the most valuable passage about fasting in the whole Bible. The Lord says, it's not bread that keeps us alive. God's Word keeps us alive. God is the one who decides when we live and when we die. And He gave us his written Word so we can know Him better. He gave us his Living Word, Jesus Christ, to wash our sins away. And it's his Word that is life – not just the life of this world, this flesh – but the eternal, spiritual life that awaits us in Heaven. Remember, Jesus is the Bread of Life. His flesh is true food and his blood is true drink. Without Him, there is no life in us.

In other words, our faith in Jesus matters more than anything, even food to eat and water to drink. We need Jesus more desperately than food and water, because it is better to die in the flesh than to die spiritually. Only Jesus can give us eternal, spiritual life, so He is like food and water, but on a higher level. And He gave us that life by dying, by sacrificing his flesh and his blood on the cross. Nobody understood this in his own time, and people turned away from Him when he explained it, because they were too focused on their lives in their world and the needs of their flesh.

But Jesus clarified it himself: “It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.” The Holy Spirit “quickeneth,” which means He gives life. The flesh profits you nothing, because it will die no matter what. God's Word, written in the Bible, and in the person of Jesus Christ – they give you the Holy Spirit. They give you life.

So when we fast, we can remember that God gives us our life. God numbers our days. Jesus is our most desperate need, not food. The Holy Spirit animates us, not our flesh. Compared to our need for God, in his Word, in our relationship with Him through the Holy Spirit, in the Salvation Jesus offers us – food is nothing. So we can get closer to God by fasting and remembering all that.

When we deny the flesh, we empower the Spirit. When we overcome the urgings of the flesh, we listen to the urgings of the Holy Spirit. Basically, if we want to get closer to God, we have to learn to stop listening to our flesh and worrying about it all the time. Then we can start listening more closely to God.

I need to work at this. I wish I could fast like Daniel, let alone Moses or Jesus. I can barely go 24 hours, and I have addictions and fleshy desires that lead me into sin. I could stand to pray more. I could stand to read the Bible a lot more. I know I have a lot of room for improvement. What I'm saying is, don't be discouraged if this sounds like a lot. I am not better than you. I'm probably worse. God knows where you are, and will work with you. He wants you to succeed. He wants you to come to Him. He's not going to trip you up before you're ready. He just wants you to genuinely make the effort.

Like I said, I'm just starting my journey to mindfulness of God. Journey with me. From the few steps I've taken, I already know it's worth it. God's loving presence is abundant and joyful, and I find myself thinking about Him all the time, without having to force myself. I want to live in his loving presence every moment of my life. I'm not there yet. I still have idols to break down. But I know Jesus will get me there, because He orders my steps. I have faith in Him. I think it's a journey worth taking. If you're not sure, talk to God. Ask Him if what I'm saying makes sense. Ask God how you can get closer to Him, so that He can be your One True God, with no idols before him in your heart. May God bless you bountifully, in the Holy Name of Jesus Christ.

Your Brother in Christ, "Roger"

Richard

The nature of sin is that of self-preservation and growth:

Lust, as I’ve mentioned, is an example of a sin that grows.

I feel acknowledging that sin grows is an important concept to acknowledge – sin, unless uprooted, will grow like weeds. The nature of its growth is devilishly fascinating in its absolute intelligence.

As mentioned, Satan is the lord of imitation and illusion and, as the father of sin and the presenter of doubt, he will place the innocent seed of unbirthed sin within a person's mind as a thought or a seemingly dull impulse. His predatory nature has taught him to wait for a time when the host is more vulnerable than usual and then slowly, he will manipulate the sun of knowledge, which I term demonic wisdom, to shine on that unbirthed seed and invite it to taste the potential of life.

The light and warmth of this germinating sun will take the form of justifications for any and all action. This is all that a seed of sin requires to begin the process of growth. This is not a tall task either and, if we put our minds to it, we can very easily justify just about absolutely anything and everything in this world. This concept is also as old as time itself.

I often think back to the story of Judas. I’m sure that you share my sentiments as you find yourself at a total stalemate trying to figure out how a man, let alone a disciple, who not only walked with Jesus but experienced first-hand his miracles and sovereignty could even consider the thought of betraying him to the Romans. It’s mind blowing that a person who walked and talked with the son of man and witnessed him, not only healing the sick but also raising people from the dead would equate 13 pieces of silver, or whatever price, as an equitable price for the life of Christ, the person He knew intimately. How could Judas possibly, for even a split second, feel that this trade was adequate. Judas didn’t act alone, Judas acted on the impulse of sin that had already begun to birth within his spirit and heart and the nature of sin is to present a lie as a truth. Simple. [Note from Witness 1: It’s possible that Judas felt it necessary to “force Jesus’s hand” at the hands of the Romans and Pharisees, and he expected Jesus to violently overthrow them rather than be crucified, it’s a complicated question and can be difficult to ascribe definite motives, like pure greed, to Judas.]

This is the very point that I’m trying to make regarding the nature of sin and its father. It is formed within imitation and illusion. Sin often presents itself as a truth, at least to its host. Humankind has not only partaken in, but advocated for, the most heinous actions when lies presenting themselves as truths and, the current generation of this world continue to not only do so but celebrate the existence of it.

Sin, and all forms of it, possess the ability to shape shift and, like its father always has and continues to do so, will subtly morph along with the course of time defending, justifying and attaching to new, revised and refreshed social causes. In today’s world sin is spoiled for choice with the options humanity now offers.

Within sin, its sister - lust - has a nature that can only follow its predestined path of its host's degradation. Sin can never be satisfied and will continue to seek other aspects of sin to join it within its host. There eventually came a time when Judas ‘snapped’ out from the intoxication of his sin and when his mind was released, he hung himself from shame – enough said.

- Yes, Judas betrayed Christ – we can, I’m sure, collectively use the words, ‘absolute insanity’ when considering his actions.

- In the 18th Century Mary, Queen of England – nicknamed, ‘Bloody Mary’ – this is the origin of the popular drink’s name, ‘a bloody Mary’ by the way. Well, she, like many royals in History had an awesome time by burning thousands of Protestants, all in the name of God, because they chose to worship THE VERY SAME GOD AS SHE DID but not in the way that SHE BELIEVED WAS RIGHT – absolutely insane.

- The German race in 1939 all partook (directly/ indirectly) in the murder of Jews and others – The world today reflects on that period and labels it as ‘absolutely insane’.

There are only a few examples of insanity that exist in the world. The sad thing is that most of them have been conducted under the banner of God and claim to be fighting for this kingdom. The truth of God was used by the devil as he twisted the lie and presented it as a truth.

So, where is sin now? Where does it live within our lives and what lie, presenting itself as a truth, does it resemble today? I personally see it as taking a far softer approach than it did over the past few centuries. Its artful metamorphosis has found root within the loving embrace of individuality, tolerance of all, and acceptance of practically anything.

Not only is every sexual fetish, kink and perversion encouraged but celebrated under a proud banner of individual freedom and liberation. Every incarnation of spiritual perversion is applauded for its members' bravery and respected and celebrated.

The doctrine of satanism no longer finds a place in the pages of books which have been authored by incredibly brave individuals who relay their horrific and sickly abuse experience of having been lured into and made a part of a satanic coven. The church of satan now not only exists and is thriving amongst the youth as it paints a picture of satanism as a loving, understanding and acceptance-based philosophy but it also is a legal representative in the setting of spiritual laws of various cities and countries in the world.

Who would have ever imagined that the church of satan would have the power to outlaw The Lord’s Prayer in schools due to its indoctrination nature? How did we as a people, a collective world, get here? This degradation of society happened the same way as it has since the beginning of time. Sin simply found its time, it felt its sun and did what it was created to do, it morphed to suit a new world. No longer was it required to pit the Catholics against the Protestants or vice versa, it found something more tolerable by today’s standards and began its germination suited to the collective consciousness of this generation. I am not sure why people are shocked at the state of the world because if there is one thing about sin that you can 100% rely on, it is that sin does not, never has, and never will sleep. It first found its purpose in the mind of a once innocent soul who walked with God in the Garden of Eden, Eve. Since then, like its father, it is always on the prowl and looking for opportunity. .

A word of caution – remember sin’s tools: imitation and illusion.

Before you start looking around and pointing any fingers at others, despite their history, make sure that you have taken stock of yourself. Remember, He said that the most elect will fall. When was the last time you took a look at the behavior of some TV ministers and their ‘collective congregation’ of followers? To me, and perhaps to you, it may be obvious that there is very little of God in their words and behavior however, what about their congregation who clearly believe that they are following the word and will of God relayed by these ministers?

Do you remember the once hailed great, ‘Christian Revival’ which first started in Toronto and was(n’t) aptly named, ‘The Toronto Blessing’? What a circus act to disrupt the hearing of God's word in Church. People touched by the Toronto Blessing would suddenly break out in uncontrollable laughter while others rolled along the floor or lost control of their bodies as they marched around the building. This ‘outpouring’ of, not the Holy Spirit but definitely a spirit, didn’t happen within the obvious clutches of a sinful people doing bad things, it happened in the church. I remember this period so well and I also recall many who were not ‘blessed’ with the Toronto Blessing like others in the congregation believing that they lacked the faith required for the Holy Spirit to touch them as it had others who were acting like they were demonically possessed. The unfortunate but most fortunate ones in truth felt like outcasts and began doubting their current walk with God as they prayed to be touched as they others had. This insanity, this deception, this division happened within ‘the house’ of God.

I cannot tell you how many times I walked out of sermons when this lie, presenting itself as the truth started manifesting in the congregation.

Can you only imagine what a person, who had never heard or seen of any of the ‘Toronto Blessing’ in action, would think, feel, say about this behavior if you had to show them footage of it taking place? The first word that comes to my mind is, ‘insane’. Yes, totally and utterly insane

Judas betraying Jesus, insane.

The church of Satan, insane.

The nature of sin is not insane, but more insanely intelligent in its ability to take the form of what is required for it to bring division and deception. If that requirement is to imitate the nature of God's presence, then so be it. Sin stood in the presence of God in Eden. Eve didn’t simply live in the Garden of Eden; Eve has an everyday spiritual and physical encounter and relationship with God.

Eve knew nothing but God and Adam and lived within the nature of God in the garden and yet, due to the imitation and illusion of Satan she, I’m sure very unconsciously, allowed the seed of sin to rest within her while Satan waited for the time to turn the sun (to remind you that the sun I speak of is not the actual sun but the a manipulation of the truth which imitates the truth) to shine on the seed allowing to it begin the process of germination. Eve, like Judas, betrayed the very nature of God.

The world considers what Eve did with absolute disbelief and yet, in doing so, they provide a fertile soil for the planting of their own seed of sin.

Sin is the furthest thing from a conscious choice and its victim will not comprehend the end result of its full bloom. However, never ignore its humanitarian façade that presents the lie it offers as a truth. The lie is often very personal to the person and therefore will thrive well within the hearts of many, and yes - this includes Christians, despite being in the kingdom of God, you are not excused from your humanity. If you haven’t been taken up in a flaming chariot as Elijah was, I hate to break the news to you but your soul is just as vulnerable as the rest of humanity. King Saul is a great example here and, despite his Godly anointing, he too, like all of us, was never excused from the lure and temptation of sin.

Eve, Judas … they personally experienced the nature and grace of God and yet they fell susceptible to the deception of the lie presented by Satan and believed it to be the truth. So, let’s cut the bullshit, take off your constructed cloak of righteousness and be honest. A perfect place to start would perhaps take the form of reconsidering the way you think and speaking to others under the shroud of righteousness and the banner of holiness.

The gays, the addicts, the whomever you ‘love’ but don’t, ‘love their sin’ really don’t need your very kind acceptance for the lifestyle that they currently find themselves in. They perhaps need your understanding – yours, not God’s. God already understands them. Remember that just you, He created them and called them by name too.

Drew

Hey,

Thanks for the post, very informative, if a bit scary, though I do not feel all that scared about it, even though it is true. Whether this is simply because I do not understand the consequences, or God, is protecting me from it I do not know completely. I just wanted to share with you a vision that I had a couple of weeks back that confirms what you said. When the vision started I hear a voice say, "Can I speak to you?" Followed by a white light and the wind that I have found (and I have mentioned) to be associated with a direct message from God blowing on me (this was the last vision/dream that I had for almost two or three weeks, as I now believe that the other dreams/visions have been stolen from me). In it was either a windows seven or a vista desktop, with someone sitting at it saying in a panicked/worrying voice "is it really November third?" twice before it ended. He was doing something on the monitor, what it was I cannot recall.

The only place that I believe is still using that antiquated software is the military/gov. The third is on a Friday as you pointed out this year and the fifth is on a Monday.

I asked God to show me things in regard to your prophecy and he told me a couple of things. Mainly that it will be on the third (He also told me before you put out the blog that it would be available at 7:30 CT which it was), and that the attack will happen across multiple cities at night. This would cause the most economic damage I think and would directly lead to the destruction of the city that is spiritually called Sodom and Gomorrah. [Note from Witness 1: This is not an official Two Witnesses prophecy]

I had hoped that this was nothing, but it appears to not be. I pray that God helps us all prepare and preserves us until the end, whatever that might be in each of our individual cases.

If there is anything that I can do for you or if God would have me do anything for you/say anything that I'm too deaf to understand through you, just let me know. I pray that God saves us all. May he keep and protect you and your family until the very end. Go with His peace. And if I am wrong in any way please let me know, I would much rather be in the truth than in any lie.

In Jesus name, may you have a good rest of your night.

ColorTree

Hey I just wanted to add that I got the same intuition last night (posted it on my telegram).

The only thing I have to add (which was already covered in a general sense with what you said), is that the Israel conflict heating up is (((Hamas))) {they planned/enabled it}, and the next domino in this is to stage a false flag in the US to drag the USA golem into full blown war again 9/11 style, to parlay Trump-israel into the NWO.

I have a lot more thoughts and intuitions about this but they come from a more strategic explanation/observation. I got more stuff on the bigger picture too. [Note from Witness 1: Please send your further thoughts if possible]

We basically came to the same conclusion in different ways.

Here are some screenshots indicative of the predictive programming happening in real time (glowies leaking disinfo to tards who want to feel special by getting insider info).

Anyways just wanted to say that I got the same vibe you guys did.

[Note from Witness 1: These Johnny-come-lately false prophets are just jumping on the bandwagon now that it’s cool to talk about false flags, only we have been predicting this for years and I have been talking about 9/11 since way before anyone else. Use discernment, as this reader suggests. God bless you all and thank you to these readers for their valuable insights and commentary. We appreciate all of you and are grateful for so much support from around the world. ]

Foraging with the Christian Caveman #3

Two Witnesses Disclaimer: Safe, sustainable & responsible foraging

The information provided on this website is designed to inspire and educate readers on the traditional and modern uses of plants as well as trapping.

We are not liable or responsible for any consequences resulting from consuming, trapping, or using wild food based on this information, including accuracy and availability, and all wild, trapped, or hunted is food consumed is at your own risk.

The Two Witnesses have not evaluated the accuracy of these statements.

Continuing with the series is the next section of plants for your remnants to study and look up. Remember, I recommend looking these up, watching You tube videos on them, and finding them yourself. If the latest prophecy and world events unfolding aren’t motivating you to prepare now, I don’t what will. Let’s begin.

Black walnut: The outer shell is a green fleshy mass. As it ages, this mass will turn black. Inside are walnuts you can eat. It is recommended to use gloves when shelling these, as the juices can stain your hands. People use hammers or run them over with their cars to shell them. Has vitamin A, C, copper, calcium, iron, and manganese.

*Bonus tip: Old trappers used these to dye their traps. When you first get your steel traps, it’s good to boil them with some baking soda to get rid of the grease that comes on them from the factory. Once you get the grease off, put the traps outside for a week or two to get an initial light rust on them. After rusting, knock the rust off. With the black walnuts, get one gallon of them that are black, smash them up and throw them in a 5-gallon container with boiling water. Lower the traps one by into them. In two days, remove the traps. Now you have naturally scented and camouflaged traps.

Cattails: If you played the survival video game The Long Dark, then you definitely know this plant. Well, it’s an actual survival plant! You can eat the heart of the stalk, make tinder out of its head, in late summer use the roots that are full of starch for flour or cook them to eat, and use the pollen as flour as well. Make sure to identify this properly, as you don’t want to mistake this for an Iris, as those are toxic. I recommend watching videos on Iris’s to make sure you know the two plants. Cattails are found around wet places and bodies of water. Have Vitamin C, beta carotene, niacin, riboflavin, thiamine, potassium, and phosphorus.

Hickory nuts: Another type of nut you can eat. They are known for being hard to crack. The type of trees they come from are Shagbark, Shellbark and Black Hickory.

Jerusalem Artichoke: Type of sunflower. The key identifying feature is the yellow flower center and 13 petals (13 tribes of Israel). The tuber is used like a potato. This plant is also known for its gassy qualities due to the high levels of inulin, a soluble fiber that passes intact through the digestive system. Methods to eliminate this include soaking it in salted water before simmering gently in milk, and slow roasting it to break down the inulin. The tuber is best collected in winter or early spring.

Kentucky Coffee Bean: You can make a coffee substitute with this. Gather ripe pods from fall through into winter, extract the seeds, and roast at 350-degree F for 20 minutes or until the shells are brittle, then crack them with a nutcracker. Remove kernel from the shell and roast at 250 until dark brown, then grind and brew like a coffee. Seeds roasted less dark can also be eaten boiled or ground into flour to mix sparingly into baked goods. Immature seeds gathered when the pods are still pinkish to yellow in mid- late summer can be boiled and used like fava beans.

Lambs Quarters: Popular plant among foragers. The seeds can be cooked as a grain or ground into flower. Leafy tops from young plants can be collected from spring to early autumn, and can be eaten raw or cooked like spinach. Quinoa is a domesticate variant of this species. It is a very nutritious plant as well. Has vitamin A, C, calcium, folate, riboflavin and manganese.

Dead Nettle: Can be cooked in the pot as a green. Great in a stir fry. Can also be juiced or in a salad. All over the place during spring. Has vitamin a, calcium, iron, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, manganese, and some protein.

Wood Sorrel: Tea can be made from it to soothe the stomach and stop vomiting. Has a lemony taste. These are more of a trail nibble, but they are found everywhere, including even in urban settings.

Shepherds Purse: The plant can be used to stop hemorrhaging and can be used as a poultice for inflamed joints. Is also a diuretic and helps with bladder problems. The young tender leaves can be gathered in spring and fall and eaten raw or cooked as a potherb. The shoots can be eaten as well.

Virginia Waterleaf: Can eat the young leaves in the spring, both raw and cooked. The shoots are tender and juicy. These are everywhere in forests and are available for a long time.

Prickly Sow-Thistle/Common sow-thistle: Can eat the peeled stalk in spring or early summer raw or cooked. The leaves can be eaten raw or cooked when young or tender. Cooking reduces prickliness.

Chicory: Roots of first year plants can be eaten cooked, old ones are too tough. Young or old roots can be dried and ground into a coffee-like powder. Young spring leaves can be used raw or cooked as a pot herb. They have beautiful bright blue-purple flower heads.

That’s all for this segment. Go forth and study! Time is short. If you haven’t gotten Sam Thayer’s field guide, you are behind the game. This book is literally the best resource you can find on this subject in the world. And it’s only 30 bucks. Great investment to keep you alive. A lot of the information I wrote about in this segment is from this book. I highly recommend getting his other books that go into extensive details on specific plants. I have read his three other books multiple times.

Link to The One Foraging Book To Rule Them All: https://www.amazon.com/Thayers-Field-Guide-Edible-Plants/dp/0976626640

SHTF Traps and Snares - Christian Caveman

The time to get traps and snares if you don’t have them are now. The prices are shooting up, and eventually you won’t be able to buy them. The government has also tried banning traps in the past, and they will try again in the future. Traps are the most efficient way to get meat, and any end times survivor needs an arsenal of traps to weather the apocalypse. In this article, I am going to detail a list of traps you should buy. I will list the core ones you need ASAP. View your traps as you view your knives, guns, and other weapons. Some of these can be repurposed as anti-personnel tools, area lock down, and booby traps to protect a camp or homestead.

A good trapper is a formidable opponent, and throughout American history, trappers were the original survivalists who were the best hunters and woodmen. To trap an animal, one had to understand the environment, animal behavior, and woodlore. To learn trapping, one often had to apprentice under an experienced one to learn the tricks of the trade. While that is still applicable today, we now have many resources available online to learn. The best resource I can recommend is TheMeatTrapper on YouTube and Patreon. He is oriented towards a prepper/self-sufficiency mindset, and he has phenomenal advice I have never heard anywhere else. Most of what I have learned has come from him. I can’t possibly write about trapping and snaring to the full extent to what I would like on here when his videos and resources are for free on YouTube. So, I will try to summarize and point you to the gear and websites to stock up. You need to study these videos and watch them over and over and practice the techniques.

Traps for SHTF: Sleepy Creek or MB #11 double longsprings footholds (small-medium game), Sleepy Creek or MB #2 double longspring footholds (medium game), MB550 Closed Jaw 2 Coil Spring footholds (medium game), Round Body Grip Traps 110 and 220 (kill traps for small to medium game). Get around 12 foot hold traps, 8 #11 longsprings and 4# #2’s or MB550’s. Get 2-4 110s and 2 220s. These are rough numbers, and if you can get more, get them. You must evaluate your trapping territory and the animals around you. You might only have small game or larger game, so you will have to prepare accordingly.

“Blind” foothold sets are the king of trap sets. They require no bait and they completely catch animals off guard. You can set them on trails, set them in front of cubbies you build out of sticks or buckets that have bait, in front of scent posts, carcasses, logs on a trail and more. The body grip traps can be set in front of den holes, cubbies, and on trails. The round shape has a more persuasive shape than the usual square body grip traps. Body grip traps are great for when you need an animal killed and it can’t be alive running around creating a “burn circle”. You use them most of the time during cold weather or in the water, as the meat will spoil quickly in warm weather if the animal is dead.

Put 6 feet of american #2 chain on the longsprings and closed jaw traps. You can buy quality chain at fntpost.com. Don’t get cheap Chinese chain. You can use 3/32 aircraft cable as your tieoff for the bodygrips. #2 chain can be used as well.

For the longsprings, you can get bigger trap pans that will enlarge your capture rate at wildrivertraps.com. I use the #1.5 mink and muskrat pans. This way, anything from a squirrel to even a coyote can be caught in your longsprings.

MB550s are another option if you can’t find any longsprings, especially the Sleepy Creeks, as they are out of business. Coilsprings are generally not as durable as longsprings, but the MB550s are an exception and are built tough.

Snares: You can buy snare cable and parts from Snareone. Newt is one of the most respected snaremen in the world. He can talk to you and get what you need. If you don’t want to make your own snares, you can buy premade ones from him. I recommend getting a set of 12 of 3/32 1/19 twist snares that can be used for coon all the way to deer if need be. He also has a sister site that is focused on survival snaring. They have snare packages you can buy ready-made.

I also recommend reading his book, Survival Snaring. I have read that book multiple times, and always learn something new. He also has great instructional DVDs. I also recommend buying his premium snare dip called Formula One. It protects your snares from the elements and camouflages them. You can also use the black walnut trick I listed in the foraging article I released today to dye them if you can't afford it, but it isn't as good as Formula One.

Snares primarily work by being set in trails. They are silent and if set off by a misfire don't scare animals and educate them like steel traps do, so they can be reset if they don't catch anything. Animals view them as a part of the vegetation. The way to set snares is to set as many as you can in a trail. Set them for different heights and species depending on the sign you see in the trail.

Snares are lightweight and can catch large game like deer. If you need a lot of meat in a hurry in a survival scenario, you can “gang set”(set many snares) 3/32 snares in deer trails. You can also set them on rubs the bucks use with their antlers. Newts Survival Snaring book goes into great detail over this. TheMeatTrapper also has videos on how to do this on his Patreon and Youtube. For more information about using traps to provide food or other benefits, his Patreon is a great resource.

This is a down and dirty article to get you remnants started on trapping and snaring. Trapping is a huge subject, and I recommend beginning your study now. Combined with a robust foraging knowledge base, you can begin to become self-sufficient with meat and plants. You will be leagues ahead of everyone if you are equipped with a nice arsenal of traps and snares.

- Christian Caveman

Conclusion - Witness 2

That's all for now! We will be writing about an upcoming fast soon.

Thank you to all the strong men who contributed to this article - I say this as a strong woman. I pray God blesses you all abundantly for taking the time to contribute to our mission to serve Jesus Christ. It may seem small to you, but it is not. It is big to God and many following this page.

I will be writing about a collective fast coming soon.

I pray you all are blessed by these writings in the name of Jesus Christ,

- Witness 2