Tyler, Texas – It is nearly three years since I and a group of CORAC members attended the J6 protests in Washington, D.C. I wrote my angry piece about the coverage of it a few days later -and people are still warning me that I am under surveillance and that I had better be careful. In fact, shortly after the linked piece appeared, a dear friend of long acquaintance absolutely battered me verbally and told me I had gone round the bend. Sadly, that encounter still casts a shadow over our long friendship. The release of the fuller J6 tapes show I was far more on target just a few days after the event than any of the investigative committees or media have been. The only thing I missed was how very large a role corrupted law enforcement played in perverting that genuinely “mostly peaceful” protest.
I don’t worry whether anyone puts stock or not in my belief in the visitations I have experienced all my life, but it is only fair that you do know that I do – and I fully take them into account when I make my decisions. For most of my life I didn’t speak of them at all – and then, beginning in 1995, only to my director Priests until I went public in 2013. I don’t speak of them much now, largely because I was instructed from the beginning that once the battle of the storm was fully engaged, that was NOT to be the emphasis. The issue before us now is NOT what God is going to do for us, but whether we are going to demonstrate to Him that we do, indeed, love Him by our actions and behavior. I am not at all interested in adding to the chaotic cacophony of “prophetic words,” almost all of which contradict each other – and almost all of which explain how if we will just pray the right way, God will let us sit in our armchair while He cleans up the mess we have made of things. I don’t believe that for a minute and I will NOT knowingly give the false hope it entails. The battle of Armageddon has begun – and in fact – began near the very plains of Meggido the Bible prophesied. You don’t take time to attend a strategy seminar once the battle is engaged. Get to work with the prayer of doing and trusting.
That said, after having several friends rake me over the coals for my position in the immediate aftermath of J6, I asked my angel if I had any real cause to be concerned. He laughed and said that if the government struck at me for any reason, that would signal the beginning of their final downfall. Accept it or not, but that led me to double down on speaking the plain truth about what I think of this authoritarian movement by the left. It’s a win-win situation for me: if they don’t touch me, that is fine; if they do, I am glad to spend a few months in jail to watch the curtains fall on these mendacious, tinpot tyrants. So, understand, I don’t care if they’re monitoring me or not.
When I was in my 20’s, just getting a good start in larger politics, I sometimes served as a surrogate speaker for Congressional, Senate, and a couple of Presidential candidates. Whenever there was a mixed group or they were worried about spies I asked them to send me. I rather arrogantly told them that I would convert half of the spies and scare the heck out of the other half. Arrogant or not, that is still how I feel and still how I live. Truth will stand the test of examination.
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Many have been praying for Bishop Joseph Strickland after he was deposed without canonical cause by Pope Francis. Make sure to send up some prayers, as well, for the good folks of Tyler, who are hurting that their shepherd has been taken from them. Many had moved to Tyler specifically to be under the guidance and protection of a Bishop who respected and lived the Gospel message with his flock. They are hurting. I spoke to a group of them on Saturday afternoon. They are in shock to discover that a few “social justice” Priests and Chancery staff in town have been figuratively dancing on Bp. Strickland’s grave. Thus far the offenders are only those who want the Church to forget its focus on Christ and remake itself as a temporal left-wing NGO. The devil’s acolytes always dance with glee at their pyrrhic victories. (And yes, those who want a “synodal,” rather than a Holy Catholic Church are the devil’s acolytes.) They have their reward.
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In Matthew 5:45, Jesus says that God causes the sun to rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the just and the unjust. The storms sent to the unjust are to wash them away and those on the just, to purify them. It is our interior disposition that determines for what purpose the storm comes upon us. If we are truly God’s, we should be glad of the storm, trusting that, as with all things He allows once we turn completely to Him, it is for our good or that of others. Storms are an opportunity for repentance and refinement for those who love God.
A few days ago, Michael Voris was ousted as the head of Church Militant. I have sometimes expressed concern that, for all his marvelous talent, Voris is often lacking in prudence and charity. Even so, he has a unique and fiery talent that, safely contained within a well-constructed furnace of discipline, could be a profound source of light and warmth to the faithful. Too often it has seemed to me to be something of a prairie fire, consuming all in its path and scorching too many innocent bystanders.
He has some unresolved personal issues that he is now going to spend time dealing with. I am disappointed that the board of Church Militant saw fit to announce that Voris had violated its morals clause. That struck me that this might be more of a hostile ouster rather than a pause so that he can get his life together. I pray that is not the case. If so, the board will find that, like Project Veritas earlier this year, when you eagerly oust your founder as a political move to seize the power and influence he built, you usually oust the organization, itself. What you take over quickly becomes an empty shell.
I pray for Michael. I pray that he truly resolves the issues that bedevil him – and I pray that he returns renewed, his fiery passion focused and tempered with charity and prudent resolve for the good of the whole Church.
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About a month ago I was chatting with a friend who was wrestling with a tough problem. Near the end of our conversation he somewhat sardonically mentioned that he did not have an angel guiding him. I quickly retorted that I don’t, either.
I get irritated when people think that I have Jiminy Cricket sitting on my shoulder guiding me safely through the shoals of life. Whether my visitations are real or just the way my peculiar mind processes logic, it most assuredly is not like that.
That is not to say that my visitors never give me direction – but on the rare occasion they do it is in rebuke or for purification and is not an easy or pleasant thing at all. At least not at first. Kind of like surgery: you eventually feel a lot better, but it would have been pleasant to have gotten the benefit without the pain of surgery and recovery.
Most of the time it is more like the ‘case studies’ many of you have been given in college or at management seminars. I am shown a problematic situation, given a massive amount of accurate information surrounding that situation, and then directed to figure it out and develop an approach to deal with it. I’m given a lot of latitude from there BUT…I am responsible for all the consequences. I am NOT allowed to do nothing to avoid those consequences. This gives you a lot of incentive to get it right. I am often told things in sly, subtle ways that will easily mislead those given to leaping to conclusions. That gives a lot of incentive to be precise.
Add to that the devil constantly trying to seduce with false hope and bowdlerized information. I am often acerbically amused by those folks who claim they always know whether something is from God or from the devil. What they show is that they are easy prey for his malevolence – and have not even a beginning of a clue of how clever he truly is. Many of the great saints, including St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross and St. Padre Pio speak to how they were fooled for a time by the devil – yet random folks who know every itinerant and crackpot prophetic word there is, but little Scripture, salvation history, and even less theology have perfect discernment the great saints do not? Which is more likely, that they have been given perfect discernment the saints were not or that they have deceived themselves? Dozens of times I have been warned by sincere (and sometimes frantic) people that I should always ask supernatural visitors to say, “Jesus is Lord,” to weed out demons. Way to defend yourself from a cannon with a cardboard shield! Read Mark 1:24 and Luke 4:34 and you would know that demons easily recognize and attest to God: they just don’t submit to Him. They can (and do) even make impressive shows of (false) piety to deceive the gullible. But, as I noted, these types are usually too busy contemplating every purported prophetic word that comes along to bother studying Scripture and contemplating deeply its implications. The devil has one strategy: to separate you from your absolute dependence on Christ – and a billion tactics to accomplish it. If I come across a bit salty on this subject, I often contemplate in wonder what easy pickings for the devil most people who consider themselves great demon-fighters would be if the devil considered them a serious threat rather than an unwitting ally. And I weary of being offered unsolicited counsel so regularly by people who have more (oddly fearful) hubris than wit.
This, though, is the milieu in which I operate. It is conducive to humility and resignation rather than preening and showiness. In addition, I am instructed to take responsibility for everything I say or do, whether it is given to me or not. Turns out God is not much interested in credit being taken from Him, given that any Christian worth his salt already knows that all good things come from God, anyway. The Lord is, however, mightily offended at how many people blame Him for their failures by claiming that their half-baked, hare-brained, sloppy schemes were, “God’s work.” If you think my error in interpreting rescue as an event rather than a process was a doozy (and it was) it’s a good thing you are not aware of all the whoppers I made while training for the main event.
I rarely ask questions, for all too often, if given an answer it comes with a new heavy burden of responsibility. I trust that if I need to know something to do the work before me, I will be given the answer in one of my ‘case studies’ or figure it out. I spent decades trying to honorably get out of what I pledged myself to. I know my frailties; my sins are always before me. Yet I persist, trusting that the Christ who fed a multitude with two fishes will cover my vast inadequacy if I will just continue on with the next right step trusting to Him completely. If it is all true, it is certainly true that the Lord entrusts His treasures to earthen vessels, indeed. For each and every one of us, it is not our mighty prowess that brings success, but our willingness to serve the Master in season and out.
My son once confided to me that he was praying that he get a touch of what I have. I panicked – and was nearly in tears begging him to stop doing that. I later had to explain to him that I am not unaware of the honor attached to it all if it is true, but that it is the sort of honor you take on in prayerful hope that no one you love will ever have to take it on again.
If it is true, it is a burden far too heavy for me to bear and far beyond my poor competence. It turns out that the Lord is interested that you be willing. If you are, He will, Himself, bear most of the load and cover your incompetence with His supreme grace. But you don’t feel powerful or worthy: you are extremely aware of how small you are…but persist anyway.
Two people I know of got a taste of what I deal with. Both ran like scalded dogs almost immediately, with one begging me to pray that it would stop and never be repeated.
It is in the little things, the things people scorn as mundane, that great purposes are accomplished. It is in the willingness to be scorned and publicly humiliated, but persist nonetheless, that love reveals itself. One of my favorite passages is Jeremiah 20:7-9 because I feel it in my very bones.
And yet if this type of service to the Lord keeps you ever in mind of your own sinfulness and frailty, you pass a barrier into great joy as well as you really embrace the reality that for all your faults and failures, God is ready with His supreme power to transform the world around you if you are patient and willing. Wait on the Lord. Be of good courage and He will strengthen your heart. Wait, I say, on the Lord.
Before she was entrusted with the leadership of the French Army, St. Joan of Arc was examined at a Monastery. She was asked why, if God wanted to save France, He didn’t just save France? Why did He need her at all? Oh, how I cherish her response and the profound rebuke it is to all who piously explain why we need do nothing but just wait for God to do it all for us! She said, “It is ours to fight the battle and God’s to grant the victory.” The depth of wisdom in that brief statement is unutterably profound. We can accomplish nothing of ourselves, but God can and does accomplish the greatest achievements through the most unlikely and improbable vessels, confounding the vanity and hubris of the worldly powerful. All the power, all the knowledge, all the influence in the world is less than a grain of salt on God’s breakfast table. The Lord delights in us stepping out in trust to accomplish His purposes, which we are so incapable of. In fact, He demands it. So when we calculate the forces arrayed against us, we have good reason to be cowed if it is our strength we count on. If we truly trust in God, we can’t help but pity the poor fools who array themselves against Him.
Do not think a dose of mysticism will show you how special and powerful you are. It will show you, often painfully, how small and feeble you are while demanding you go forth anyway. (Contemplate Gideon). There is a great battle before us. It is ours to fight, though the forces arrayed against us, by any temporal reckoning, are overwhelming. If we fight with fidelity, trusting to God’s prowess rather than our own, He will grant the victory.
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Almost half of the 102 pilgrims who arrived to found New Plymouth Colony died before celebrating the first Thanksgiving. They were not giving thanks for a winter of ease and plenty; they were giving thanks that their dream of establishing a colony where they could worship freely together despite almost unimaginable hardships endured, nonetheless. They gave thanks for their new friends, the Wampanoag Indians.
I see, this year, a lot of articles bemoaning that this is not a traditional Thanksgiving, that there are terrible storm clouds on the horizon. We have as much to be wary of as to be thankful for. I say this Thanksgiving is very much in the tradition of that first one, a celebration of the will to persist among hardship amid both old and new friends. This Thanksgiving, in fact, captures the spirit of the first better than any in my lifetime – at least for those who trust in the providence of God.
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Next week I have to pay the December bills for CORAC. I am about $6,000 short. I am in the process of developing a major donor program, but I don’t expect it to bear much fruit until after the first of the year. So I turn to you. Please, in your Black Friday purchases, in your Giving Tuesday donations, and in whatever other excuses organizations like ours use to get you to open your wallet, remember to give to CORAC.
In three short years, working on little more than a shoestring, we have put together a host of instructional videos, classes, and downloadables to help you prepare for crisis and that are useful in good times, as well. We have hosted hundreds of people in homeopathy classes, built a nationwide radio network, given almost everything you need in instructional videos on the types of home skills such as canning, gardening, hunting, building to get you through good times and bad. A lot of good people have given of their time and talent so that all people of goodwill can thrive despite any depredations of the godless left and a government gone predatory.
We are in the midst of adding a CORAC Defense League, both to utilize trained personnel to defend our communities and develop strategies we can all use together now that government is busy defunding the police, routinely releasing violent criminals, and allowing terrorists across the border willy-nilly. If it is to be, it is up to us. We are drilling down to spread work deeper into local communities that can sustain each other through mutual cooperation, even if we find ourselves without traditional communications. Of all the organizations out there, we surely do not shout the loudest. That is largely because we are too busy doing the little things that will help us to survive and thrive when the things all of us fear get fully malignant.
As the old is falling away we are already working to build the new that will enrich all of us. Please help and give as generously as you possibly can. Cast out into the deep. God bless you.
If communication goes out for any length of time, meet outside your local Church at 9 a.m. on Saturday mornings. Tell friends at Church now in case you can’t then. CORAC teams will be out looking for people to gather in and work with.
Find me on Twitter at @JohnstonPilgrim
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