Short Story: Sound Men of Good Repute
He doesn’t get it; doesn’t want to. While he was speaking for Jesus from the pulpit, they were taking oaths to Allah in secret with witchcraft rituals and giving themselves titles like “Grand Master” and “Imperial High Priest and Prophet”. They say it’s all in fun and that they are kidding –doing it for charity. After all, the congregation voted them into the office of elders and deacons: sound men of good repute.
So it’s like a jigsaw puzzle of humor: the Master Mason is one piece, the Imperial High Priest and prophet and is another; so forth; and the sum is a laugh?
Yeah. They say and smile. Exactly Like That.
The burn victim’s family is gushing with gratitude on the infomercials.
And while Dad was preaching, they had already got orders from somewhere else to lead the people astray a little bit at the same time. They always say Jesus Christ isn’t the only Way. They are not sure on que expressly so their doubts give room for another Way than that which they say they believe.
They were to have helped us all. They stayed to keep us back from error when the Church went down. They masquerade as the people God Says you have to say ‘Yes sir’ to because they are older and in office. Sunday school teachers. Principles. Lawyers. Politicians. Preachers. Business leaders. PatriSacrificers.
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He never could understand it through the years: the implications he was always doing something wrong and so wasn’t included; the small disagreements with core doctrine: their understanding is always almost perfect; just enough off to be warrant their own conversations per issue; just enough to monopolize the time meeting after meeting. I know we’re busy here. But now explain that part to me again Brother Bill…the difference between predestination and election. I don’t get that part. And I’m told I’m a smart man.
So he would diligently explain it a different way; use a different metaphor; accept their invitations to play golf; to go fishing; to eat dinner. ( He could talk to them then and say things in private they might be too embarrassed to say publicly. They were the weaker brother who needed help.) He accepted the twenties pressed into his palm to take his own family out to eat, even though for him it was really an interruption; he was always distracted in the expensive and unusual restaurant.
Always he looked for the final way to make them understand –to stop the little bit of confusion from which they suffered. It is what he talked about, argued over with the announcers on TV, prayed to God to receive to give to them. He had us looking too, though he never wanted to just accumulate wisdom. He wanted to get it to give it away. Thats who he was and what he did. He searched in books not the Bible for the perfect explanation that would win them freedom from doubt: to free them from “Yes, but..” into “yes.” and the Church into Peace. He searched the Bible for an answer to match their books. Too.
But he wouldn’t join the lodge. Grandpa had always told him: stay away from the Masons. They’ve got a loyalty only to the lodge. They do some good works. But something isn’t right. Don’t forget, Lucifer disguises himself as an angle of light –as a certain kind of mercy that ain’t mercy.
They had always understood. They provided the books. In their own nepotism of secret handshakes and code phrases, on the level and on the square, their circle of alternate brotherhood: they knew. In the city council and on the Board of the Church: they knew. In the charity drives and the little cars: they knew. With the Islamic fez and the crescent moon and star: they knew. It was never a joke: the ‘good’ Islam and ‘bad’ Islam in the war on us all from within.
He was working for them; for their benefit day and night; in prayer and out of it. He prayed before God for their benefit according to their books and their own desires. They trained him to search for the perfect metaphor that would win them over. He grew more concerned with getting them to say yes than listening to God. They set him up and he fell –for them. He did it all for them according to what they put in his heart. That had become his Christianity: the hope of the Perfect Explanation in the supposed non-interfering speech. There was nothing he could see outside of it.
But at least he was Reformed. He liked that word. He siad it often as his proof that at least he wasn’t a papist.
His life was a sacrifice he was certain, after having read their books, of which God would approve. Wasn’t God for certainty? Was God a god of confusion? Of course not! And while he was working for the confused, God took care of his own family. That’s how God is; that’s how It works. He ignored widows for them; the sick; the lame. He was studying for an Answer. Are non-widows or the healthy Less in God’s eyes?
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I don’t want vengeance; wouldn’t care if I got it or gave it away. What is it? What’s it good for? Only God knows what to do with it. I’m not God.
He still doesn’t understand. It’s too much for him. He thought not understanding certain things made him better even as he searched for a certainty for them. He thought putting a mote in his own eye for the emotional stability of the whole was the Way. They taught him that, little bit by little bit. They taught everybody that through him together with some twenties for his family to get a little taste.
On his death bed he wanted me to promise that I wouldn’t do it. Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord. –as if God weren’t in us. He was always like that: for God in such a way that all the good people die while the angels harp a happy tune. He said that (about vengeance) after the argument that made him see what they had done; after the look on his face they would have laughed at. Jimmy Brand?! Gilbert Sousa?! The Whitehalls?! Then, moments later: That’s why Roscoe Hemmings went to First Church. He pushed to get me to join the Masons. He stared at the ceiling with a gaze that saw back through all the years and was a kind of simple hopelessness over the time spent.
They are ..what are they? Spiritual cuckolds. Deviants who prey on good faith. If the Church were their mother, they are literal Mother Fuckers: Incestuizers and Seducers while being a husband of one wife and a father who maintains his household within a certain range. They made the Church itself the idol that had to worshipped.
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Benny stands outside in the parking lot and says : You can’t do that. Your Dad..
I hold up my thumb (of all things). I remind him I have a green thumb. I can do better than this –God has proved it.. This isn’t my life or even my job. Just a temporary thing in the middle of everything else. All that Rosemary at the house? I rooted all that from sticks from the big plant out front. God did it through me. I got a green thumb—God proved it. God’s made things grow through me –done good things through me. And you can’t even say this is evil unless you use their books and swear their oaths to Lucifer. Unless you look through their eyes.
Ben says: We just have to keep looking. Have faith. We got to keep our faith! God will give us the Answer!
I never lost my faith. If anything I found it. God’s proving it right now.
I didn’t go looking for this; this came looking for me. Literally. It hunted me like all the rest. It had me while I was growing up, just like it had Dad. Looking back, Mom knew something was wrong; she just couldn’t put her finger on it. She and Grandpa didn’t get along.
I got that from them too: whatever Mom says can’t be right. Preachers wives …are preachers wives. I was there praying for their good according to what they wanted as I heard it from him. Nobody could stop me. Dad knew what he was doing. We were going for a Breakthrough together. How could Mom always be sabatoging his efforts? Why couldn’t she understand? I was there when they made everyone work for vanity. I was there! For decades.
It’s about the kids coming up. They will NOT live under the same.
Look around, Ben. Things weren’t like this when they first got here. Things weren’t like this when we got started in life. They were raised safe. Then they took over and now look at it –in one generation. It ain’t about Democrat or Republican either. It never was. It’s about what is right before God and not men.
I pull the slide back and hear the bolt slam a round in the chamber. It sounds heavy-quick: of good quality; real. You pull this trigger in a gun like this and it’ll actually go off and be ready to do it again before you can blink. Something will happen too. The Glock twenty three c is a good weapon. Nice balance. You can shoot Glock’s forever without having to clean them. Or about twenty thousand rounds worth of ammo per cleaning job. No joke. They shoot underwater for God’s sake. Only downside is plastic magazines. They wear out over time. Not like the metal magazines for a Sig Sauer or a Browning. The forty is a good caliber though. Good stopping power. Everything is a trade off: power versus portability; weight versus power; size versus overall utility; commonly available parts versus the specialized weapon; legal status of getting a permit for the different tools. You know. We got a CIA knife over here –on sale. Composite. Don’t show up on radar. X-ray either. But you probably knew that.
They say to those whose ears they think they have: You can play until the money runs out. –while they use cash as an addictive medium for the free will lie: The more money you got, the more your will is free! Who can’t use more money? You’ve won!
‘Til the money runs out you control? That the word from the Big Boss from Somewhere Else? From the Light Bearer? From the High Holy Potentate?
But justice is free; moneyless. Priceless. When God says go, the talking, the jokes is over. And God has already given His Word, even though they think there is no God except the ‘Light Bearer’, so supposedly any other He can never Speak.
It’s an old — an ancient war. This is just the current round between God in us and Lucifer in them. God brought me up the slow path. But I’m here now.
It took God a lot to get me here. It cost Him.
Glock’s don’t have a traditional safety. God in you squeezes –it goes off. So if they tell you as a last resort that you’ve forgotten to take off the safety? Don’t believe them on that one either. Just squeeze.
I’m all out of answers and technical details. Go home, Ben. I’ll be alright.
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2 Chronicles 36:15,16 And Jehovah the God of their fathers sent to them by his messengers, rising up early and sending; because he had compassion on his people and on his dwelling-place. But they mocked at the messengers of God, and despised his words, and scoffed at his prophets, until the fury of Jehovah rose against his people, and there was no remedy.
Ezekiel 8:7-18 And he brought me to the entry of the court, and I looked, and behold, a hole in the wall. And he said unto me, Son of man, dig now through the wall; and I digged through the wall, and behold, a door. And he said unto me, Go in, and behold the wicked abominations that they do here. And I went in and looked, and behold, every form of creeping thing and abominable beast, and all the idols of the house of Israel, portrayed upon the wall round about. And there stood before them seventy men of the elders of the house of Israel, and in the midst of them stood Jaazaniah the son of Shaphan, with every man his censer in his hand; and a thick cloud of incense went up. And he said unto me, Hast thou seen, son of man, what the elders of the house of Israel do in the dark, every one in his chambers of imagery? for they say, Jehovah seeth us not; Jehovah hath forsaken the land. And he said unto me, Yet again thou shalt see great abominations which they do. And he brought me to the entry of the gate of Jehovah’s house that was toward the north; and behold, there sat women weeping for Tammuz. And he said unto me, Seest thou, son of man? Thou shalt yet again see greater abominations than these. And he brought me into the inner court of Jehovah’s house, and behold, at the entry of the temple of Jehovah, between the porch and the altar, were about five and twenty men, with their backs toward the temple of Jehovah and their faces toward the east; and they worshipped the sun toward the east. And he said unto me, Seest thou, son of man? Is it a light thing to the house of Judah to commit the abominations which they commit here, that they yet fill the land with violence, and keep provoking me afresh to anger? And behold, they put the branch to their nose. And I also will deal in fury: mine eye shall not spare, neither will I have pity; and though they cry in mine ears with a loud voice, I will not hear them.
Ezekiel 9:3-11 And the glory of the God of Israel was gone up from the cherub, whereupon it was, to the threshold of the house; and he called to the man clothed with linen, who had the writer’s ink-horn by his side; and Jehovah said unto him, Go through the midst of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem, and set a mark upon the foreheads of the men that sigh and that cry for all the abominations that are done in the midst thereof. And to the others he said in my hearing, Go after him through the city, and smite: let not your eye spare, neither have pity. Slay utterly the old man, the young man, and the maiden, and little children, and women; but come not near any man upon whom is the mark; and begin at my sanctuary. Then they began at the elders who were before the house. And he said unto them, Defile the house, and fill the courts with the slain: go forth. And they went forth, and smote in the city. And it came to pass, while they were smiting, and I was left, that I fell upon my face, and cried, and said, Ah, Lord Jehovah! wilt thou destroy all the remnant of Israel in thy pouring out of thy fury upon Jerusalem? And he said unto me, The iniquity of the house of Israel and Judah is exceeding great, and the land is full of blood, and the city full of perverseness; for they say, Jehovah hath forsaken the earth, and Jehovah seeth not. And as for me also, mine eye shall not spare, neither will I have pity: I will recompense their way upon their head. And behold, the man clothed with linen, who had the ink-horn by his side, reported the matter, saying, I have done as thou hast commanded me.
In the Name of Jesus Christ, Amen
Am I now come up without Jehovah against this place to destroy it? Jehovah said to me, Go up against this land and destroy it. 2 Kings 18:25
Anti-Christ tried the lie that God had sent him to conqueor Jerusalem through the Assyrians. But God says to the worshipers of demons who hate Jesus Christ and Israel: "But I know thine abode, and thy going out, and thy coming in, And thy raging against me." 2 Kings 19:27