The Lies We Tell Ourselves

“Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city.
For without are dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie.” ~ Revelation 22:14-15

They that do his commandments have the right to The Tree of Life (symbolic of eternal life…ie. The Garden Of Eden, so long as we had access to it’s fruit we lived forever…hence the reason we were banned from the garden, that which is imperfect or fallen is not granted eternal life) and to live in The City Of God, also called The New Jerusalem.

But those without . . .without (outside) the city, not allowed in …but also those without his commandments, which is Wisdom and Truth, The ONE Way, The ONLY Way… are:

• Dogs…meaning such persons who, in a spiritual sense, are comparable to dogs.  A dog is a scavenger and will eat any ol’ filthy thing…I’ve had dogs who will eat cat poop and chicken poop!  This is a spiritual picture of one who has no discernment, who will eat any food offered to them (except green beans! every dog I have ever owned has always refused to eat green beans..).  Like dogs they run from one place to another looking to stir up mischief, nosing around in your trash trying to see what kind of dirt they can dig up on you…people who falsely attack, accuse and persecute.  The most disgusting thing about dogs is that they eat the most disgusting of things (ingesting the spiritual filth of the world and calling it good) and then they vomit it back up … and then they eat it again.  eeewwww..  

…But these, as natural brute beasts, made to be taken and destroyed, speak evil of the things that they understand not; and shall utterly perish in their own corruption;

…While they promise them liberty, they themselves are the servants of corruption: for of whom a man is overcome, of the same is he brought in bondage. ((Whomever “overcomes” you and brings you into submission, it is he whom you will serve…either you submit to God through Jesus His Son or you submit to “The World’s Way” which is by default the way of Satan as it is he who controls this present world system ‘And the devil, taking him up into an high mountain, shewed unto him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time.
And the devil said unto him, All this power will I give thee, and the glory of them: for that is delivered unto me; and to whomsoever I will I give it. If thou therefore wilt worship me, all shall be thine.’ ~Luke 4:5-7))

For if after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, they are again entangled therein, and overcome, the latter end is worse with them than the beginning. 

For it had been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than, after they have known it, to turn from the holy commandment delivered unto them. 

But it is happened unto them according to the true proverb, The dog is turned to his own vomit again; and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire.

(2 Peter Chapter 2)

• Sorcerers…whoremongers…murderers…idolators…ALL are characteristics of The Spirit of Anti-Christ.  Sorcerers, witches, they that try to work things through their own natural power (the flesh) which is in rebellion to God…For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft , and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry ~1 Samuel 15:23 …this “natural power” involves things like orgiastic sex magic (hence the whoremonger part) and ritualistic human sacrifice (hence the murderer part)…the power of the flesh is that of the seed (semen) and that of the blood…to worship the created things over and above The Creator is the sin of idolatry whose root is found in stubbornness.  Like a petulant teenager unwilling to do it His Father’s way, thinking he is somehow smarter doing it his way…but that way only leads to death of the soul, burning in outer darkness.  And just because you are not participating in an orgy or drinking blood does not mean you are off the hook…these have deeper hidden roots as well, as a sorcerer or witch hides undercover working behind the scenes to manipulate and control a situation in such a way as to make it benefit them, regardless of “right” or “wrong”…through a perfectly executed lie even a small one, especially a small one with a big impact (ie. mind control, hypnosis, implantation of thoughts etc.) or a slight twisting of the truth or by maintaining an image, a facade, that makes them look all squeaky clean, gaining peoples trust and getting in on their “good graces” while all the while on the inside festering with evil, scheming and conniving to get money or have greater power over their followers or both (televangelists are PERFECT examples of this!) it all has to do with “the image created” VS. Reality…these are all witchcraft and sorcery.
• And last but certainly not least we have this: whosoever loveth and maketh a lie… those who love both to invent and tell lies and love to hear them told by others.  And, in our day and age, this is basically EVERYONE and is the root cause of all that comes before it in the Bible verse.  The “vomit” that the dog returns to is his own lies…the lies he tells himself (whether conscious or subconscious) to placate his own conscience and justify to himself his evil deeds and the lies which he tells to others, working his sorcery, maintaining the “image”, keeping up appearances.  And not just these but those who prefer the lies over The Truth, they that loveth the lie are just as complicit as they that make it…because THE TRUTH is often quite obvious and often quite simple, but too hard to bear for most and so they tell themselves lies…or accept the lies told to them by Hollywood, The Mainstream Media,The Advertising Companies etc… willingly submitting, volunteering even, to be mind controlled; preferring instead to live in a delusional fantasy world instead of facing REALITY as it is!  This is ubiquitous here in america, where pretty much everything is a LIE and people believe these lies and accept them as truth and then live life based upon a LIE which creates more lies because everything you now do and say has it’s basis in a lie.  It’s a vicious, insidious cycle and deeply ingrained within our culture…lies upon lies upon lies and if you aren’t actively working to dig yourself out from under the avalanche of lies then you are a lover of lies and complicit with those that made them…YOU have no IDEA what REALITY IS!!

Jesus Said “And if thy hand offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched: Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.
And if thy foot offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter halt into life, than having two feet to be cast into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched: Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.
And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out: it is better for thee to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire:
Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.”
(Mark 9:43-48)

The Hive vs. The Smallest Minority

The next part of “Man’s Rule”, Nathan’s newest YouTube documentary series, is now up!

Capitalism Vs. Socialism  ..awesome 😀

This has nothing to do with the video…just a quick update: Been very busy with the putting in of the fall garden…we’ve have been getting A LOT of rain recently and so I am taking advantage of the subsequent softening of the ground to just go ahead and start my fall garden, it may be a bit early but you’ve got to take advantage of these things as they come! No drought for us…we live on the edges of the drought region, but there has been no “official” drought in southern West Virginia for as long as we have lived here (almost 7 years now)…the rainfall has always been perfect, so much so that we rarely even have to water the garden ourselves…and I am soooo grateful for that!

The Wheat and the Tares grow TOGETHER

“Another parable put he forth unto them, saying, The kingdom of heaven is likened unto a man which sowed good seed in his field:  But while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went his way.
But when the blade was sprung up, and brought forth fruit, then appeared the tares also.
So the servants of the householder came and said unto him, Sir, didst not thou sow good seed in thy field? from whence then hath it tares?
He said unto them, An enemy hath done this. The servants said unto him, Wilt thou then that we go and gather them up?
But he said, Nay; lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with them.
Let both grow together until the harvest: and in the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them: but gather the wheat into my barn.”  ~Matthew 13:24-30

Jesus said that the “wheat” and the “tares” grow TOGETHER. The tares will never be allowed to completely obliterate the wheat, however, try as he might, the wheat will never be completely free of the tares.

The “tare” of the middle east, and the weed that Jesus is most likely referring to…one that the farmers of his day would have known quite well and thus would have automatically understood the meaning of his parable, is a weed called “lolium temulentum” today known as Darnell or “Bastard Wheat”.

It is a species of Rye Grass that, while it grows, looks exactly like wheat…so much so that very few farmers can distinguish it from the real wheat and thus must let both grow together until the ears of wheat open and show forth their “fruit”.  What Jesus was saying is that the tares can only be distinguished from the wheat by their FRUIT!

Unlike wheat, the “fruit” of the Bastard Wheat (not a real Son) is BLACK and POISONOUS, producing convulsions and even death when eaten.  Both grow in the same field together until the day of harvest because only once the fruit is shown can the reaper then distinguish the wheat from the tares and harvest accordingly…but until that point the tares must remain or else some of the wheat may be mistaken for a tare and uprooted too!

Such is the reality of life on Earth.

A Picture Post: Summer 2012

The latest family photo, taken by my mother-in-law during the electrical outage…from left to right, there is Nathan holding Charity (2 y.o.) then Elijah (9 y.o.) between Nathan and me, then me holding Baby Samuel (1 y.o.) and then Matthew (4 1/2 y.o.) and last but certainly not least, Solomon (7 y.o.) on the end there…it was freakin’ HOT people so that’s why all the boys have their shirts off, in case you were wondering…

The first 2 days after the electricity went out I cooked on this lovely fire pit that Nathan and I built together several months ago…it is the fire pit at one of our “guest campsites” (for family and friends who like camping)…we have 6 fire pits scattered about The Land and woods and this one is my favorite 🙂

Once it became apparent that the electricity was not coming back on for awhile, we then got the kerosene cook-stove out of storage on the side porch. It had been nearly 3 years since the last time I had used it, but a bit of cleaning and tweaking and replacing of the wicks and we had it up and running in about an hour. Here it is pictured with our dinner cooking in the dutch oven and water for dishes heating in the large stockpot. I much prefer kerosene cook-stoves to propane fueled “camp-stoves” because of it’s versatility in that the kerosene can also be used for lighting oil lamps and, if it were winter, for our kerosene heaters. For emergencies, we always keep kerosene on hand and gasoline for running our generator…and of course, a good stockpile of wood!

A good view of our creek, the open area near the center of the picture is our “watering hole”….it’s about 2-3 ft. deep there (depending on the season) and, I imagine, was at one time used for trapping crawdads. We have an electric pump on our well with plans to get it fitted with a hand-pump as well, but had not done so yet, (but that is now at the TOP of our “to-do list”) so when the electricity was out for 11 days I hauled water from this “watering hole” using 5 gallon buckets. We mostly used this water for washing purposes but for drinking we would filter it through a reusable coffee filter to remove all sediment and then boil it for at least 3 minutes (preferably 7 minutes) and let the water cool and then put it through the Berkey Filter. Fortunately, on day 5 of the outage the electricity was restored at the gas station down the street and they sell huge 5 gallon bottles of water for the benefit of the campers at the RV campground across the street (WV is a very popular tourist destination) which they sold to us for $5.00/bottle since we are local regular customers.

We’ve got a pair of “white-breasted nuthatches” nesting in the eaves of our roof right in our porch…they have two baby birds and we love sitting outside and watching the parents fly back and forth feeding them and listening to their little peeppeeppeeppeeps 🙂

Peppers! I just had to show a bit of the garden, the peppers (both hot and sweet) are doing so awesome this year…we’ve got nearly 30 plants and they are all very happy!

and here’s a picture of a couple of quilts hanging on the line at the woods edge, just cause I think it’s pretty 😀

I had more pictures to share but the internet is being slow and uncooperative, and I am too impatient to wait for them to upload… we have cellular internet and it does not like humidity and it’s pretty humid here right now, unfortunately…this recent string of HOT and HUMID weather is forecasted to break on Friday Night, and I really hope that it does!  I may load more pictures tomorrow, but don’t hold your breath about it 😉

How it All Went Down

A.K.A.  “Welcome To Hell”

It all began, for me, on the afternoon of Tuesday June 26th when I severely jammed my 4th toe on my right foot on lumber sitting in the kitchen leftover from working on the attic (which is accessed through the kitchen).  Jamming my toe is not unusual for me, I am a natural born klutz….but this was the worst jam of my life, it swelled up and turned all black and blue and while I could move it…it hurt like HELL!  So I buddy-taped it to the third toe and went about my business, I am a BUSY WOMAN people…I don’t have time for broken toes, dammit!!

I hobbled about all day Wednesday, getting as much work done as I could, considering the circumstances…I could put hardly any weight on that foot without pain but I could still walk, so that was enough.  Same thing all the way through Thursday and then Thursday night Elijah (our oldest son who is 9) and Matthew (our third born son who is 4 1/2) both came down with some kind of throw-up/diarrhea stomach bug thing…it was so not pretty, especially considering that we were about to have guests on Friday…”just great, just wonderful” I thought, as I prayed that it would all be over before our guests arrived….

On Friday during the day, Matthew could hardly keep anything down and Elijah had graduated from the “throwing-up stage” to the “diarrhea stage” …about an hour before Nathan’s parents arrived I foolishly and naively thought that the worst might be over…Elijah had not had anymore diarrhea and Matthew had not thrown-up in nearly 3 hours.

When they arrived Elijah promptly ran into the bathroom and threw-up and then had diarrhea…while he was in the bathroom and me standing in the doorway between the bathroom and kitchen offering him “morale support” that is when the electricity started to flicker….

Just 20 minutes before that Nathan had informed me of some storms that were on their way here and that they should arrive within the hour…”oh great!” I thought “just peachy, the storms aren’t even here yet and already the electricity is throwing a temper tantrum…”  as if to answer my thoughts the electricity went out for about 30 seconds and then came back on, when it did I was still standing in the doorway between the kitchen and bathroom with Elijah at the toilet and I just happened to glance at the digital clock on the oven when the electricity flashed back on after a 30 second delay and the clock read 5:55 then it quickly flickered out and back on again and the clock read 12:00…freakyfreaky lol…

After Elijah finished up and brushed his teeth we went outside to greet Nathan’s parents who had arrived about 10 minutes beforehand, everyone was standing outside waiting for the storms…no one realized that the electricity had already been flickering, which was a bad sign and the first inkling that these storms were not gonna be good…the moment I opened my mouth to tell everybody about the electricity flickering was when it went out, 10 minutes before the storms had even arrived the lights went dark and they did not come back on until 11 DAYS later.

Still not fully comprehending what was heading our way, we continued to stand around outside and small talk…thinking that we still had a little while before the storms would arrive….we were wrong.

When the sound began it was like a low far away rumble…the interstate is not very far from our house and we often hear the low-rumble of tractor trailers as they drive by, but this was..different…although at first we tried to dismiss it as just being the interstate, after a few seconds we began to wonder.  The sound kept going and started to intensify….and we started to glance around, like prey caught in a trap looking for what direction the predator would come…  the trees were not even moving yet, no wind was felt and yet there was this roaring sound …like a far off distant train that was coming closer and closer and closer and then it SLAMMED into us abruptly and forcefully like the linebacker of a football team.  I saw whole trees double over at the waist and lawn chairs blow clean across the yard, Nathan began yelling “Get in the house!” …we grabbed the children and ran through the back door….  (we later learned that they clocked 90+ MPH winds with these storms…hence the term “land hurricane”…)

At this point we thought that maybe a tornado had touched down somewhere nearby even though tornadoes are virtually unheard of in this area, mostly because the mountains are deterrents to their formation.  We don’t have a basement so we all gathered crouched down in the center of the house while Nathan and his step-dad watched the storm from the back door.  After a few minutes I couldn’t stand it anymore and went to watch with them. The WIND was relentless!  Blowing and blowing and blowing while the rain came down in sheets and the lightening flashed …it had been early evening but the darkness was that of midnight …every once in a while one of our cats would come running up on the porch for sanctuary and Nathan would let it inside…

And then, almost as if by magic, the wind just stopped.  As abruptly as it arrived, it left….a bit of drizzle continued and every 5 minutes or so there would be the distant rumble of thunder but other than that it was over and like the munchkins of OZ after the death of the wicked witch we slowly and hesitantly came out from hiding…. everyone, every human, every animal, was fine… and miraculously not ONE tree, not a single tree on our whole 9 acres came down.  And we made sure, a few days later we took some walks of the property to access any damage and there was none to be had, other than a few good sized branches that fell in nondescript places, it was as if there had never been a storm at all.

We couldn’t say the same for the surrounding area though…shortly after the storm finished I headed up to the gas station that is just a few miles down the street to get ice now that the electricity was out, on my way there I passed two trees in the road that I had to go around and a tree on the side of the road sitting on the power line causing the power line to  be about 10 feet above the road…I cautiously dodged under it.

When I got to the gas station there was no power there either and they had closed and locked their doors…there was a small group of about 8 people standing outside the door looking inside the windows…looking agitated, stressed, panicked, I could feel it in the airs….I knew better than to stick around this powder keg for too long….I pulled into a parking spot, they all looked my way, I smiled and politely waved …they responded with angry grimaces, I quickly turned my car around and left, heading back home.

When I got back home, everyone seemed to be in high spirits, they had gotten the oil lamps and candles all lit…Matthew hadn’t thrown up again and Elijah said that he was feeling better…everyone was eating chocolate pudding that Grandma had brought with her.  I took this as my cue to go do the evening milking, handing  Baby Samuel over to Nathan I quickly gathered my supplies and a lantern and left.  The milking went calmly and smoothly during which I prayed for strength and wisdom and calm to envelope all people involved in this storm.

When I came back to the house it was nothing like what I had prayed for…STRESS reigned supreme!!  Matthew had thrown up again, this time it was the chocolate pudding all over the dining table, chairs, floor….Nathan’s step-dad, who is a public school janitor by profession had already leapt into action and was getting it contained.  I kept handing him towels and bleach and water and, by the flicker of firelight he managed, somehow, to get it all cleaned up.  I thanked him profusely for helping when he really didn’t have to….shortly after that they both left to return to their hotel room in the hotel right next door to the gas station that I had just come from.  I warned them about the “atmosphere” of the gas station and to be careful, and reminded them that if things started getting ugly they could come to our house for the night.  Fortunately for them, the hotel had a generator going and they had minimal lighting, fans, and TV to watch.

Determined to still go forth with our plans and keeping the hopes up that it would not be out for too long, we didn’t break out our generator to operate fans and few lights until Day 3 of the outage.  Honestly, it would not have been so bad had it not been for the sickness and my “semi-broken” toe, hauling water several times a day on a maimed toe is NOT my idea of a good time LOL.  Day 1 of the outage and Elijah was still having diarrhea and Matthew threw-up 2 more times…

By Day 2 of the outage they got immensely better and things were looking up and that is when THE HEAT set in…90-95 degrees F with like 75-80% humidity…RELENTLESS….for almost the entire time of the outage.  Solomon got sick once from the heat and Charity got sick once from the heat, both on separate days….my kids are very healthy and rarely get sick, so this was certainly something else and combined with the power outage and my hurt toe, I have to tell you that my sanity hung by a thread at times…but I just kept on keeping on, not really thinking and just doing what needed to be done…like a soldier I did my duty…

By Day 5, we had gotten into a good groove and really started to get the hang of it, started to ENJOY it even …we spent most of our time outside, it was just like camping…the kids spent most of the day in the creek and I gave the babies bowls of water to splash around in…whatever I could do to keep everyone COOL.  After the feeding and the cleaning of everyone (both human and animal) the days would sort of just melt into a summer laziness kind of attitude, hiding in the shade and reading or playing card games or board games until the cool of the evening came then it would be garden work and the evening milking and then dinner, our nights were always super-late, the kids often not getting in bed until well after 10pm on most nights.  It was. shall I dare say it??  FUN 😀  And while I started this post comparing the experience to HELL, looking back now I somewhat miss it…. and the other funny thing?? I didn’t even miss the internet at all…

11 days without electricity

It seems appropriate that, right after doing a post about my homestead, 3 days later I am violently thrust into a situation where it becomes KEY to my survival!  And yes, I had to do laundry by hand for 7 PEOPLE (including cloth diapers…we had some disposables at the beginning of the outage but quickly ran out and wasn’t able to get more until the day before the electricity came back on…) for ELEVEN DAYS  hahahaha!  Thank God it’s a skill that I was able to practice 7 years ago when we first bought our other house and lived without running water (but we had electrcity!  …. the pipes in our “new to us” fixer upper house were rusted shut from sitting unused for close to a decade and a new line had to be dug but there was only ONE plumber in town with ability to run the new line and we had to wait nearly a month for them to be able to do so…) …

In case some of my readers don’t know, we live in one of the areas most deeply impacted by the “land hurricane” that came swooping through here with a surprise attack on the evening on June 29th…that was some scary shit let me tell ya! Nathan’s parents had just arrived for a weekend visit and the storms arrived about a 1/2 hour later and we saw them on radar beforehand and knew they were coming and we were all gathered outside waiting for their arrival (who doesn’t love a good thunderstorm right?) …no one knew what they were…no one knew what was happening until is was upon us and when it arrived ALL HELL BROKE LOOSE!!  (and Nathan’s wonderful parents were SO HELPFUL to us for the 3 days that they were here, we owe them the DEEPEST debt of gratitude for playing with all the children while Nathan and I secured the homestead and went into “non-electric mode”…the whole area was out of gas for 3 days, because there was no electricity to pump it, and they were effectively stranded for most of their stay, fortunately they did manage to make it out and back to Maryland on their scheduled departure date though…)

You just have no idea, it sounded like a roaring train or the jet engine of an airplane swooping down to kill us all…the wind was whipping everything around like MAD …and we all looked at each other like “Holy Shit!  Is that a Tornado??”…and we promptly took cover in the house.  The whole storm lasted only about 20 minutes but the devastation was well…devastating.  To say the least… it is estimated that OVER 10,000 trees were down in our county ALONE and we live in a small county, in the mountainous “deep woods” of southeastern West Virginia…the storm was the scariest part, after it was over it was just a simple transition to plans and stuff that we already had in place and we were still able to live just fine without the electricity ….all that practice and preparedness came into good use!  We’ve been semi “off grid” living for about 3 years now but the storm was exactly  the “kick in the ass” we needed to go 100% off grid…I’m looking forward immensely to this transition in our life! 😀