Deaths Increasing: What to Glean & How to Move Forward

Over two months have elapsed since I last published a blog or video.  So much has happened.

My beloved St. Bernard, Samson, passed away three months ago, then at the end of May my dad passed, too.

My dad finished weak in body, but strong in spirit.  In his last few months he seemed to truly endeavor to make his life right with the Father.  He was saying things to me, humbling himself, that I never expected to hear.  I knew the Father was dealing with him, and I sat back in joy as He did.  The change in my dad’s disposition and behavior towards me and others was irrefutable. God was so good to stay on my Dad until the end, to never give up. And Dad humbled himself to receive it, and for that I am ever grateful.

The night before my dad’s passing, he could no longer speak, and after having been nearly comatose the whole day, he opened his eyes at about 10:30 that evening and stared at me intently.  He was smiling.  There was happiness in the room as I tended to him and said some things I wanted him to know that were just between us.  More importantly, I got to explain the Gospel to him once more and went through the Ten Commandments and elaborated on what they meant. It was beautiful.  I felt like the Father was giving him those last moments to clear out anything for which he needed to repent before going to the other side.

Then I asked if he wanted me to read the Bible to him.  He gestured yes.  That’s the first time my dad ever agreed to read the Bible with me.  Many times in our lives I had asked him only to hear him say, "no," over and over again.  Now he seemed enthusiastic to do so.  And all the while he kept staring at me, and smiling.  So I opened to the book of John and read the first four chapters.  After completing them I asked if he wanted me to stop, he gestured no.  So I decided to read all of the red ink (Jesus' Words) from the remaining chapters of the Gospel of John.

The Apostle John makes the Gospel so plain, that repentance is required and that keeping the commandments is a sign of our love for Jesus and in so doing we may receive the Holy Spirit.  Jesus makes that so clear in chapter 14 when He told us how to receive the Holy Spirit.

My dad got to hear that, and though he could not speak, or communicate much, he was still present for it.  

I almost don’t want to report this, but I saw angels over his bed.  There was one up over the right side who was staring intently at dad.  And then one above and to the left that seemed to be looking at the other angel.  These angels were huge, like 8 to 10 feet tall, and yet they fit in the room.  

I didn’t see them with my physical eyes, but I saw them in my mind’s eye (I suppose that’s what you’d call it).  The best way I could describe it would be to draw an analogy to transparencies on a projector, the physical world on one transparency and while the spiritual world was on another overlaying the first.

So my dad went out of this world with his last cognition being that of hearing the word of God and enjoying it while angels kept watch and were there to usher him into eternity.  

The next day, dad died at 4:31pm.  He lived 80 years and forty days.

Since then we had a memorial service in our local town, a funeral in our home town, and finally another ceremony at the place our mother’s ashes were placed.  My brothers and I went out on the boat and dispersed his ashes in the ocean at about the same place.  He was retired Navy and wanted to go back out to sea. I'm personally not a fan of cremation, but that was his choice and we honored it.

So all of this wrapped up this past Sunday, and during the last couple of months I didn't feel led to publish anything until today, and I credit the Father for being so good to give me the space and time to handle all the things my brothers and I had to do, but also to process all the things that have happened this year.  He knew my dad was going to pass and that he would need extra care in the last month.  He knew what would need to happen in order to help my brothers to shore up the "estate." And now that I'm healed and ready to go, it's time to get back to work.

I always say that the Father is the best Boss of all.  He's not a cruel taskmaster, He's no slave driver.  We are indeed His servants, but He made us and knows what’s best for us and does not over do it with our regard.  He is so respectful and comforting (pun intended) of all the situations we face and endure.  He knows things like this aren't easy, and this much change may be difficult to process, so He patiently walks us along, holding our hands through the time of mourning and grief and into something brand new (if we let Him).

My dad’s passing was the last of four we’ve experienced as a family in the last six months.  My dad’s older sister died as well as my dad’s former second wife.  And, of course, beloved Samson.

So there’s been a lot of change in all the lives of my close family.

What was most strange about it, for me, is that this was the first time in recent years that people (and a dog) who I knew very closely and spent a lot of time with, were gone.

In an almost third party, outer body way of observing it, it was like a movie or a video game (though life is no game; I'm only drawing an allusion to the experience of a character in a video game) where certain prominent characters exit the scene and the plot altogether, never to return, and the main character must proceed into forthcoming scenes unsure of which new players he will interact with or even of the locales that will make up his surroundings.

It's a very surreal experience.

Just last week I was on the couch and reached down absentmindedly to pet Samson.  This happened nearly three months after he’s gone. Over thirteen years of habits don’t just disappear overnight.

What’s interesting in Samson’s regard is that when I got passed the sadness of losing him I’ve begun to seriously enjoy the freedom of being “pet-less”. But when I look back, the things I’m enjoying now I would and did gladly sacrifice for the joy of having him.  But now that he’s gone, this is a new chapter, and a new “script” now replete with different characters and locations and the Father has been showing me to embrace that, to celebrate what once was, but to embrace the now and the wonderful and endless variety of this life that God provides. In my case, I can also look forward to a future eternity that will include Samson and my dad again.  I am so looking forward to that, but in the here and now, I am compelled to embrace the new, and to enjoy doing so, and to seek out whatever different ways I may be of service to the Father.

One thing I’ve been focusing on while not producing content is just engaging with other people, to not be holed up in the studio by myself (even though I’m not alone here, the Father is with me) but to actually not be mainly bits and bytes, ones and zeros on the internet, and even to lessen my phone exposure and emails and texts, but to live in the real world where flesh and blood people abide and to communicate with them face to face, in the same analog way humanity did for almost all of recorded history, before all of this tech came about, before the telegraph, then the telephone and finally what we have today.

Communication over the internet is not bad on its own merits, but when it overtakes a person on such a level that they stop living in the physical world and inhabit a virtual reality more than the real, then that's a problem.

So these past couple of months I’ve spent a lot of time with my brothers, my dad’s extended family, my old high school best friend and his family, amongst many other normal human interactions.  I personally needed that, and still do.  I will continue to engage with other people and seek to prevent content creation or my phone from overly preoccupying my life going forward.  

I was even able to hire a vocal coach during this time, which has been amazing as I learned a lot about the reasons I’ve struggled with my singing voice for so long.  I wish I had found this coach, or one like him, long ago.  We can learn so much form other people.  In person is the best way.

Returning to what I experienced these last couple of months, the most death I’ve been exposed to in a single space of time, much of that is attributable to my own age and the ages of those in my parent’s generation.  They are all getting around 80 years old. Psalms 90:10 reads:

All those I mentioned attained to 80 or more years, save one, who lived to seventy-five.  Samson would have been 92+years old in human years.  They all lived long lives and God blessed them to see so many days.  So, it is somewhat by default that I would see those in my family of that generation departing us now.  

But I've also seen several deaths in my current community, of younger people in accidents and even one by self-deletion.  And of course, there's been the product of the plandemic and all of the harm the so called vaccinations have brought about, which we will address momentarily.

So I think I’m not alone in regard to experiencing larger amounts of passings in my immediate purview than usual.  We are truly entering the days the Book of Revelation describes which says at the sound of the sixth trumpet (we're not there yet), a third of humanity will die.  By then, every one of us who are alive and remain will have been touched by the deaths of so many people.  At our current population of 8 billion, a third of the population means over 2 1/2 billion deaths. 

Much of these deaths are being implemented by the beast system.  All the elderly people who I know who died TOOK THE VAXES, even to the booster level.  Why? Because they believed the social controller’s false narrative (rather than God) and were PUT IN FEAR that they would surely die if they didn’t take the vax.  They wanted to extend their lives by being compliant with these liars, but did they?  Or was the vax a form of mass depopulation of the elderly?  Would each of them have lived longer or had healthier ends of life if they hadn’t taken it?  And was the vax also capable of shedding disease on to the unvaxxed, causing much sickness among them as well?

And what of all the deaths of young athletes?  I saw a video the other day that tracked 2,000 deaths of top tier athletes since the beginning of covid. 

CHECKUR6: 2,000 ATHLETES - COLLAPSING, DYING, HEART PROBLEMS, BLOOD CLOTS – MARCH 2021 TO JUNE 2023

Report after report of myocarditis, blood clots, heart attacks, strokes and the like among athletes ranging from high performance youth to professionals.  Has this ever happened before to so many young people who are among the fittest people in the world, and honestly, due to modern training and nutrition, some of the fittest people who ever lived?

As I ask these questions, the time of all of our deaths is still in the hands of the Father.  Our own decisions can and do lead to early demises, but the Father makes the final decision as to when.  And in that knowledge I wonder what all of this means for those of us who still remain?  What should our attitudes be to those who passed?  What is our purpose as we stay behind?  What should we seek to do while still among the living?

With regard to the dead, as David said, we can go to them but they can’t come back to us.  

We have to mourn and grieve their passings and the absence of them in our lives, but this mourning can’t and should not go on forever.  We must release what was and embrace the new.  God wants us to live our lives and so would those we have loved who have died and gone before us.  Each of us only get one shot at this life, so we might as well live our lives to the fullest, no matter who among our friends and families yet remains in them.  We have to allow the Father to fill the void left by our dead loved ones with the new characters, places, and activities that the Father introduces.

The Father is good.  He’s all about variety.  There’s nothing boring about Him or about the lives we lead for Him.  Our own lives are temporary, ere vapors when compared to eternity, hardly even a blip. Make every day one in which you serve and please the Father and enjoy your relationship with Him and He will bless you with joy, peace and love even through the darkness of the tribulation.  Internal peace with the Father comes through loving Him (which, by extension, means through obedience to the Commandments) and it is this peace and this peace alone that one should first strive for, as Jesus said,

This is the whole sum of the matter. Let everything else fall aside, and make it your number one priority, before serving your job or career, before building a kingdom for yourself, before your wife or kids or parents, make seeking the Father's righteousness through obedience to his High Holy Standard, His Commandments, His Law, your top mission, and you will never fail, and everything else shall be added to you.

Addressing the purpose of this time of tribulation in the world, I truly believe all of this tumult, sorrow and death is to cause people to see the temporal nature of life so that they will look at their own lives, their behaviors, and seek to judge themselves, to ask themselves the question, “Am I ready to die? Am I ready to face the Father?”  This whole moment of history is meant to cause us to look within and examine what we find amidst a soberness created by the fact that so many people are dying.  We should consequently ask ourselves, “If I’m next, am I ready?”

The Tribulation is a time of chastening.  Chastening is meant for correction.  Correction is meant to benefit the recipient of that correction, to cause that person to change course, to learn to divide the wrong from the right and choose the right, so that the corrected person can be part of the eternal Kingdom of God rather than an everlasting lake of fire, where there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

The tribulation is supposed to get one to measure his or her behavior against God’s law, so that he or she’s peccadilloes may be seen for what they are, so that repentance may be had.

Our job, as Believers, is to allow the light of Jesus to shine forth in our lives, not just through our words, but through how we live.  Followers of Jesus are supposed to be different. By allowing Jesus to live His life in the fullest in us, through our agreement with His Word and His Commandments and through service to Him, others may see that this is not only the ONLY WAY but BY FAR THE BEST WAY: the way of truth, of righteousness, of treating the Father and others with dignity and respect, by keeping God’s royal law.  Jesus' way is the only way because all other ways are selfish, self-centered, self-serving and are ways of serving demons, sin and the flesh.  Our job is to get the hypocrisy out of our lives so that we may help others to do so as well.  And to show the benefit of that pursuit is not about earthly wealth, but of the spiritual.  That peace can't be bought with money, but only with the clear conscience of doing right by the Father and the other beings He's placed on this plane.

Coming full circle back to my dad.  In my view his last three months were by far his best.  He could barely walk at the end, he still loved to ride in his truck and go to stores and what not, but that was about all he could do.  Through the physical weakness he allowed himself to be humbled and to really seek after the love of God.  In that sense, he attained to his highest level at the end of his life, and for me, that was the most impressive of any of his accomplishments.  

Any of our worldly accomplishments are but dung in the face of doing what it takes to make things right with God.  That should be all of our top priorities. Our works and deeds are but filthy rags if we have never truly repented of the way in which our lives have contradicted God's Commandments.  This is what we should glean from the experience of seeing others die.  We should look within and measure ourselves against the mirror of God's Word and make things right with Him and with others.  That's the bottom line of what this time is about, and what we should learn from the deaths of others that are mounting up around us.  May we all learn this lesson, in the mighty name of Jesus I pray. A-men.