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stormears · 1 year ago

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Questions 1-77 of the writer ask game >:]

Jammie decided to MAKE my night and ask me to answer every damn one the 77 Fanfic writer questions. I assume tumblr will automatically add a readmore thing to make it not be a Bible-length post. But I’ve got 15 years of fanfic history to go off of and I can ramble like nobody’s business when I’m typing.

But if you have any interest in my fics, maybe scroll a while and stop to read 2-3 of my 77 answers hmmm?

Also I shudder to think how many tags this is going to pop up in because of the ships I name here and there, sorry strangers lol

- 1) Do you prefer writing one-shots or multi-chaptered fics?

I thiiiink I prefer to write oneshots because they take a shorter amount of time, meaning a few months instead of multiple years. Because multichapter stories almost always take me fucking years. And my oneshots are still extremely long and big time commitments to write. The last oneshot I wrote (JJK, gofushi) was 25k and took a little over two months and god I SLAVED over it…

2) Do you plan each chapter ahead or write as you go?

There is always at least a rough plan in my mind, if not written down in an outline or notes document somewhere. If I don’t know what is happening in the upcoming scene, I am not writing.

3) Describe the creative process of writing a chapter/fic

I see a vision in my mind of Character Doing Thing or Characters I Ship Doing Thing Together. I create a universe that exists only to create the circumstances where they can do that thing. However even if I just want a sexy or weird af ship scene, I STILL want their to be plot elevating it all. I often struggle to tie together a plot that makes sense and isn’t fucking stupid but still caters to my stupid preferences and kinks. It’s like trying really hard to mix oil and water.

Practically, I write down all the plot beats, ideas and important bits I can think of into a Scrivener document, maybe scrape it into an Outline ish thing, and then start writing. Before Scrivener (up until end of 2021) I wrote stories in Word. And either had a separate Word document for the story’s outline/plan, or just kept the outline in my head.

Oh yeah I also have a pretty notebook from Target with roses on the cover and soft pink pages, where I write down a VERY general outline of the story or late plot beats/important things to remember to use. This isn’t as helpful or as long as the Scrivener version but I LOOOOOVE having a physical bite of my fanfic vision, seeing it outside of my head or the internet/laptop screen. As of end of 2022 I discovered I looooove writing things in journals!

4) Where do you find inspiration for new ideas?

Imagination, music, books I read, movies, etc. Like everyone else I guess.

5) Do you like constructive criticism?

Fucking YES!!! I feel a tiny bit of resentment that fanfic comments seemingly have to be glowing praise all the time or you shouldn’t say anything at all. Good concrit isn’t about your preferences, but how well the scene accomplished what it set out to do, and why or why not. You can give concrit to a tentacle fucking scene and give the author advice on how to write better tentacle sex.

But the author of course reserves the right to either absorb that concrit and keep it in mind for next time, or just say/think “That person’s concrit makes sense, but I like the way I did it here because it’s hotter to me and I just like it this way so I’m not changing.”

6) Do you have your work beta'd? How important is this to your process?

Lmao no. I mean once, but lmao never again. I’ve never wanted a beta, I am my own editor and in my experience (reading my stories after posting) I generally don’t have typos or grammar to fix anyway, I catch them successfully myself.

HOWEVER…one time in 2019 I decided to try a beta for a Haikyuu fantasy AU story whose plot beats I was having a lot of trouble pinning down. I asked around on Reddit and only one person offered and I felt fed up with the story and irritated enough to just accept them, grateful for their willingness and time. The person offered next to no advice on the plot and instead corrected grammar that was wrong as a stylistic choice (little kids’ speech) and nothing else.

In exchange for their beta services, I had promised to review a story of theirs. So I read their FFN story which was a Naruto fic featuring a Kakashi crackship. I enjoyed their creative exploration of that ship but was flabbergasted to find their writing was. Um. Not that good. I mean down to seriously using “orbs” for “eyes.” That cliche was still alive in 2019 thanks to this person. It really felt like a teenager’s fic from 2008 but it was only a year old or so and they said they were 26.

I found things to compliment in their story and then happily ghosted them. No betas for me ever again.

7) How do you choose which POV to write from?

I usually write ship fic and I usually write from the POV of the character in the ship that I like more lol. Even if it’s a plot heavy fic and there’s little to no romantic or sexual scenes or vibes or whatever, if the ship is present at ALL that’s how I immediately arrange the plot/POV in my head. So I guess it just boils down to favorite character bias.

However I am toying with the idea of writing a JJK fic featuring a creepy problematic yandere character and usually such fics use the POV of the Object of Affection so you can feel the oppressive weird sexiness coming out of the screen at you. But this fic will be written from the yandere’s POV instead of my fave’s, so you can see their crazy af animal-like thoughts when their love interest runs away/goes missing which sets the plot in motion. The story is about finding that MC in a cyberpunk city, so hanging with the yandere the whole time who is forced to put themselves on a leash and solve a mystery facilitates the…mystery vibe of the story.

8) Do you prefer the beginning, middle, or end of a story?

Hmmm difficult to say because for many of my multichaptered fics I don’t even make it to their endings…again, it takes YEARS sometimes. One of my greatest fics, a MadaSaku dark fantasy au called Chasm, started in 2015 when I first had the idea, I didn’t publish Chapter 1 until 2018, it currently is sitting at 6 chapters, with C6 being posted on fucking January 1, 2021. It’s not even reached “the middle�� in my opinion.

I guess I prefer…the beginning? I love setting up the intense stakes and unknown factors and threats and suspense that doesn’t yet have answers…very tasty…

9) Do you comment on stories you read?

Fucking yeah I do you want to see my post with MANY screenshots bragging about how I carry 95% of AO3 readers on my back and support the fucking economy???

I don’t tell people on twitter what my AO3 is (because I rarely talk to people on twitter and when I do they fucking ignore me anyway!!! :D) but there’s 3 separate people on twitter who have made gushing tweets floored by the length and interest in my comment. I kept those screenshots too and ahhh it feels good.

10) Cltr+f "blinks" on your WIP & copy paste the first sentence/paragraph that comes up

Nothing came up. Maybe because I don’t write in present tense. Not really a fan.

11) Link your three favorite fics right now

Uhh I’m not sure I have favorites, these are the ones that came to mind. I don't keep bookmarks on AO3 so I don't really have a "favorites list" and these aren't necessarily recent just the ones I wanted to mention...

1) “Shard Society.” Haikyuu mystery crime drama about Oikawa being murdered just before high school graduation, Iwaizumi is arrested and jailed for it. Eight years later, law student Kindaichi discovers a recently written confession from seemingly the REAL murderer and is on a quest with youngest prosecutor in Japan, Sakusa, to find out who did it.

I followed this story for over a year, gave a few dozen MASSIVE comments to the author who always giddily replied to me. They also expressed their gratitude by sending me a physically published copy of it in the mail!!

2) “He Had No Fingers”. I’m gonna go for oldie fics now lol. This is a horror Naruto fic about Kyuubi being an eldritch monster, with deadly serious and ominous prose. The story makes it pretty clear that it will absolutely take over and consume kid Naruto and the whole world, in time. I remember passages describing like how the Kyuubi is its own dimension, and speaking aloud even the names of its body parts will turn its attention to you and make you explode.

When I first read it in like 2010 or something it actually made me light-headed. I remember the story described the Kyuubi as smelling like chitin (what bug exoskeletons are made of) and I somehow thought I could…smell chitin when I was reading. I remember sitting on my bed reading this story and SMELLING something I never had before. And never did again.

3) “Lapsus Memoriae.” This is an OG cartoon Transformers fic. I watched a bit of the cartoon as a kid but I don’t even go here fandom wise lol, I forget how I even found this…maybe in 2008 ish when the Michael Bay movies were new, because I was kind of into those as a teen?

ANYWAY THIS IS TRANSFORMERS THREESOME SOULMATE AGE GAP YAOI, AMNESIA AU! Medical autobot Ratchet and his 2 friends wake up at headquarters missing the last several years worth of their memories. None of them remember their respective “bondmates”. The main character is Ratchet, a prickly, older medical bot whose bondmates are a pair of hot, sexy young twins named Sunstreaker and Sideswipe.

The other 2 ships get attention too, but high school me was sooooo into the twins being clingy and protective over their beloved angry old medbot uke Ratchet. 5 stars, still a fun read despite never being completed.

12) how does receiving or not receiving feedback/support impact you?

Not…much? I feel like I “write for myself” a little more than the average person bc I’m uhhhh arrogant I guess. Low feedback generally does not bother me because I love my story more than anyone else ever could. I always spend WAY more time re-reading my own stories, sighing in appreciation at my own hard work and prose, than I do re-reading people’s comments about it.

13) what’s a common writing tip that you almost always follow?

Write what you want to read. That’s what I’m always doing. I can’t think of any other common tips besides “Write what you know” which I don’t follow nearly as strictly. One wip right now is a fantasy/comedy MatsuHana in a society where gardening is mega-popular and culturally important and I didn’t know jack shit about gardening or flowers, etc., I was googling plenty of basic information to try and make the characters sound like they weren’t total beginners.

14) how do you write emotional scenes? Do you ever feel what the characters feel? Do you draw from personal experiences?

I’m not too sure how to answer the first one. I try and write them…realistically? Keep their emotions in mind? I try to remember that a character feeling intensely emotional will probably be too overwhelmed to properly/fully explain what they’re feeling or doing. So I’m careful with my word choice. No, I don’t feel what they feel. I’ve seen people say they get emotional/teary eyed themselves sometimes writing what their characters feel, that has never happened to me.

Do I draw from personal experiences, I don’t think so. The reason I write a fic, or the scene I want to get to, or the point of a story, is never based on something I experienced, just a cool idea I want to see. I've always kinda disliked the idea of projecting yourself that blatantly into a story. That’s not why I write.

Well shit I just thought of a new Haikyuu fantasy au I’ve got cooking where the villain is an OC whose backstory is basically that she’s a sad, bitter, loser failure and doing antagonist stuff out of resentment. That fit the plot I wanted, but I realized later a lot of her life is reflections of what happened to me when I felt like a sad, bitter, loser failure in life. She’s like…30% me. And that feels like a fucking LOT, I’ve never done this with a character before, it feels like…invasive or insulting or something but I’m going ahead with it.

15) How do you write smut scenes? Do you get very visual or detailed? How important is it to be realistic?

I’ve written very few smut scenes because I’m a coward and don’t much trust my ability to write them well. The couple of times I did took a looooot of work though I ended up liking them okay. I thiiiiink I’m ace and I rarely actually want to read characters having sex. A lot of the time the idea…bothers me somehow? I’ve got my own hangups with sex both irl and in the silly fandom world. Like I remember there was a #Whore(character)week on twitter where big fans of (character) wrote/drew him being a total cockgobbling passed-around-the-room slut, and I liked a little of the content but later felt so angry I had to mute the tags bc he’s NOT a whore don’t fucking insult him, he would NOT act like that in a million years, stop it stop being mean to him etc

Anyway realism is fine up to a point but I’m not here to read about realistic sex, usually, it’s fantasy sex where nonsensical things can happen and be portrayed as appealing. If realism doesn’t facilitate the hotness, then out it goes.

16) How many fic ideas are you nurturing right now? Share one of them?

Lots…too many…I’m angry and despairing at how many ideas I have and the fact that I’m slower than almost any fanfic writer I know, so many of my ideas are doomed to never manifest or will manifest and then sputter and die before completion. I’m sad about it all the time. This is my favorite hobby and I can almost never do it at a level where I’m truly satisfied.

Anyway one of my ideas is a Haikyuu fantasy AU where Kageyama is a fantastic mage but a shitty person no one likes and he manages to capture a talking unicorn (hinata) which are hella rare, but he seriously injures the prince (Daichi). So as punishment he’s forced to tame the unicorn for the crown, and if he doesn’t he will be kicked out of the mage guild, which will ruin his life as he’s not good at anything but magic, it's his volleyball equivalent here.

He befriends Hinata the unicorn and accidentally does a spell that turns him human a la the Last Unicorn. Then other unicorns come to humanville to rescue Hinata and Kageyama gets embroiled in unicorn politics and there are many unicorn OCs based on horses I have in a racing game called Rival Stars omgggg I fucking love unicorns horses yadda yadda

17) What do you do when writing becomes difficult? (maybe a lack of inspiration or writers block)

A majority of the time I wallow in self-pity tbh.

When I make myself be constructive about it, I try to write another story which can sort of unstick my writing gears by writing in a new way/new tone for that story. Also, reading helps a lot. Reading interesting ideas and good prose is GREAT for greasing the wheels in your head and reminding you what good writing looks like.

18) Do you title your fics before, during, or after the writing process? How do you come up with titles?

I LOOOOOOVE COMING UP WITH TITLES! This is my way in which I’m Not Like Other Girls, I hear this so often among fanfic writers that they don’t know wtf to title their story, not me baby!! I love cooking up a new title and to me it’s a very important part of the story process. I usually decide the title very early on, if not before I even start writing!

My titles are usually phrases I make up that sum up the vibes of the story or point to a very significant event, the kind of thing that would “be on the cover of the book” you know? EX:

CHASM - Naruto, MadaSaku dark fantasy au. Mostly named for a point in the story where Sakura looks across a huge literal chasm and sees…something on the other side that changes her forever ;) Also points to Sakura’s deteriorating mental health due to surviving an attack on her home where many residents were killed by monsters

THE SUN ON JAKKU - Star Wars, Reylo fic I’ll probably never finish. But it was about Kylo Ren invading Rey’s mind and seeing her entire horrible childhood on Jakku. Even though only hours pass irl, he is present in her memories like an invisible ghost standing nearby and experiences those years alongside her. And over time becomes obsessed with her. His gaze is “the sun on jakku” that watches over her every day.

DAY OF THE NAVIGATOR - Haikyuu, Oiiwa space/sci-fi horror au. Aliens arrive on earth and destroy it, lone astronaut (called “navigator” in this fic) Iwaizumi barely escapes in a little ship but is pursued for YEARS through space by sexy alien Oikawa (+alien wolfpack Seijoh) who totally wants to fuck him and put an alien ring on it but Iwaizumi assumes the aliens want to eat/kill him. Iwaizumi keeps himself together with his navigator training, which stresses that your work “today” is the only day that matters. Also gives significance to the moment Oikawa finally breaks into the ship and hears Iwaizumi speak for the first time. He says “Today is it for you,” and alien Oikawa is so fucking turned on

19) What is the most-used tag on your ao3?

I think it might be Possessive Behavior or Obsessive Behavior? Yeah that’s been my fanfic food of choice since high school haha, some things never change. I just get better at dressing up my creepy ships in cool plots to make them feel less cringe.

20) Have you noticed any patterns in your fics? Words/expressions that appear a lot, themes, common settings, etc?

I definitely prefer fantasy AUs. Worlds with magic and mystery and cool places to go adventuring in, and scary but sexy monsters who can hunt down the protagonist in an open World(tm)

I’ve tried to search for common word choice or expression in my fics, tbh but I either never found any or just can’t remember.

21) Would you ever collaborate with another writer for a story?

I don’t think so. I don’t like the idea of ceding over control of my story to someone else. And if it’s a story we made up together so they “had control” over some of it in the first place, I’d automatically be not that interested and committed because it’s not fully mine. And I want it to be mine.

22) Are there certain types of writing you won’t do? (style, pov, genre, tropes, etc)

I don’t really do present tense. Can’t think of a fic where I have. I vastly prefer past tense. And I’ll probably never touch the following tropes because I hate them and think they’re stupid: Fake Dating, There Was Only One Bed, FWB.

23) Best writing advice for other writers?

Just write what you love. Even if it doesn’t really make sense, the plot doesn’t really come together, something about it doesn’t “vibe”…if you love it, that is all that matters.

24) Worst writing advice anyone ever gave you?

I can’t think of any writing advice that was outright stupid or bad…then again I don’t ever look up writing advice. I’m sure I have room for improvement much as anyone else, but I usually like the way I do things.

25) What fic do you wish you got more of a response on?

Ehh I guess my AtsuHina sci-fi horror au, The Abandoned City of Saint Winona…though I knew it wouldn’t get much of a response, because AtsuHina is such a sunny, cute ship, I don’t think most of its fans are the type to want a story where Atsumu is a disgusting maneating, shapeshifting alien who says he loves Hinata but the narration leaves it unclear if he means it or will eventually eat him.

But man I put a hell of a lot of work into that story, when I first posted Chapter 1 in 2021 and this past July when I scraped together Chapters 2 and 3. It was the first time in a long time when I wrote something where I knew the audience truly was me and MAYBE 3 other humans on this planet. Most other things I write do have a ship audience at least. And yet I wrote 35k...for me :)

26) Which of your fics would you call your wildest ride?

Oh Jesus, “Darcia” all the way…2019 OiIwa fantasy au that I only wrote one chapter of (BUT I STILL ADORE IT) I wrote/started no kidding THIRTEEN drafts of that chapter… Because I couldn’t decide certain plot points or WHY certain things would happen, I just couldn’t get a vibe I enjoyed…I toiled over this for a huge chunk of 2019, this is the story where I had that stupid useless beta on board for a bit. I actually seriously cried about this story a couple of times…

After fighting like hell and nearly eating my own skin I FINALLY posted the chapter, and took a day off work to celebrate…only for my mi litary boss to text me at 11am that day and say “Hey you know your yearly fit test was coming up next month, can you do it next week instead?” which fucking RUIIIIINNNNED MY DAAAAAAAY

27) What is your most and least favorite part of writing?

Favorite: when I end a successful evening writing session only because I am falling asleep, and I’m thinking “dammit, I could have written more!” I’ve found that many times, when I get lucky and pump out a huge word count in a session, I ALWAYS think to myself “dammit I could have gotten even more!” So even having that thought is itself a sign of success.

Least favorite: scraping my way through the dialogue for an important scene that moves the plot forward. Finding ways for characters to properly elaborate wtf is going on or needs to happen, in words that make sense for that person to say. If I get stuck on a fanfic, it’s EITHER because…I can’t make a decision about a HUGE plot beat, or I can’t fucking write the conversation that makes the scene go.

28) On average, how much writing do you get done in a day?

Oh geez…not a lot…I spend far too much of my life not writing because I’m busy with work or family obligations…but when I DO write, it’s maybe 400-500 average? Plenty of 200-300 days…Here’s my little wordcount log from when I was writing the AtsuHina sci-fi horror fic last month, like when I was really slaving away at it.

This makes me look better than usual, I think. I AM NOT USUALLY THIS ON TOP OF IT

7/17 evening from at least 700 7/19 - 1195!!! Though 160 are not being kept 7/22 - 1500!! 7/23 - 720 7/24 - 100 if that… 7/25 - 251…sleepy after post-dinner treadmill… 7/26 - 700 exactly! We’re at THE SCEN!E 8/5: 531 (well 731ish but deleted 200 ish) 8/7: 845 words 8/8: 1425 words 8/9: 742…getting closer…the narration doesn’t sound great though… 8/10: 1154. My god maybe this weekend will be it…

29) What’s your revision or editing process like?

I usually edit as I go. At the end of finishing a chapter, I will do a read-through that’s a little deeper than a “skim”, where I fix any spelling errors, tweak any word choices I was on the fence on originally, etc. Usually, after I finish a chapter, I will be posting it one or two hours later. I don’t usually wait.

30) Do you share rough drafts or do you wait until it’s all polished?

Wait until it’s all polished. Maybe this sounds contradictory to the answer above, but by the time I reach the end of the chapter, everything above it has already been combed through/edited along the way many times. So when I finish off the last scene, it’s already pretty well polished.

31) Do you start with the characters or the plot when writing?

I start with the plot because setting that in motion in the right way, and starting at the right time in the plot’s timeline, is ultimately more important.

32) Name three of your favorite fanfic writers.

Time to out myself as a toxic loser bitch but the two authors who come to mind as favorites, whose works I SO admired and enjoyed (and followed them both on other social media so I saw some of their irl happenings too) are also the two people I got the most pathetically, hatefully, despairingly envious over in all my life. They happened a few years apart. But my jealousy lasted months for one of them and YEARS for the other. People would point and laugh...or maybe just not know wtf to say...if I actually admitted how deeply my envy of those two writers affected me.

I swear on my life I don’t have jealousy problems in any other avenue of life…it’s JUST fanfic writing, the hobby that I most care about and that gets more of my passion and soul than anything else I do. I basically stepped away from their fics and decided to not look at them anymore. And even though I truly adored their works, I’m kinda scared to ever look at them again. In case it turns out I never got over it or the bad feelings just flare right up again. I don’t want to feel that way again. Sorry. Next question.

33) Do you want to be published some day?

I actually drafted 10 or 11 chapters of a fantasy YA book when I was in high school but that desire to be traditonally published faded a lot during college. I realized I like fanfic writing much more than original fic writing and don't really want my irl peers reading my work. But I did also write a shitty “book” in middle school that was 120 pages on Microsoft word about talking dragons, totally plagiarizing plot points from Majora’s Mask and Princess Mononoke.

And the YA book was about people with wings living in floating cities in the clouds. The MC’s little brother fails the Rite of Passage flying test and falls to the earth, so MC and Love Interest dive down to see if he survived and find him (a forbidden act!) and find out Earth is a nearly dead wasteland with gross monsters and some wingless dragons. The dragons dream of making it to the floating cities and conquering/stealing their resources. They hang out with a wingless dragon who barely tolerates them and carries around his extremely weak, almost-totally paralyzed little sister dragon on his back.

34) Five years from now, where do you see yourself as a writer?

I’m sure I’ll still be writing, and I’ll still have SOME of the same fandoms I do now, because fandoms last years and years for me. I’m still a bit into Naruto and read fic of it now and then despite it being over for nearly a decade. I hope I will have finished some stories by then! If I have, I might pursue my half-hearted dream of getting a physical copy of my fanfic published hehe! But I’m greedy and would only do so if I could somehow find a fic binder who’d make it to my totally extra expectations (gorgeous commissioned cover, black pages with white text for the first page of each new chapter, probably Garamond font…sprayed edges ahhhh)

35) What is one essential thing to remember when writing a villain?

They see themselves as a “protaganist” and will deal with “antagonists” accordingly.

36) How do you write kissing scenes?

Depends on who the characters are. I guess I’m usually writing characters who haven’t kissed very much or at all, or characters who at least haven’t kissed each OTHER before, because I tend to write characters at the start of a relationship because that exploratory, careful manner of figuring out how to kiss is just so fucking cute for damn near any ship.

37) How do you choose where to end a chapter?

I decide in my mental outline or Scrivener outline how much I can fit in this chapter. And it’s just…the last thing I can stuff in. My tendency to write long af chapters is a more important factor than wanting to end on a particular scene.

38) Would you ever write commissions?

I…don’t think so. I’ve definitely thought about the idea. But even if I had buyers, writing a commission probably wouldn’t go any faster than my own fics do, which, again, take months or possibly fucking YEARS…my payment would be fractions of a fraction of a cent per hour if you wanna slice it that way which is SOOOOO not worth it for the amount of time it takes me, and the time it takes away from my own wips, and there’s not many customers who I think would have the absurd patience required for ME to pump out a finished piece…the outlook is just not good.

39) Share a snippet from a WIP

(I’m putting a snippet of the dang AtsuHina Sci-fi horror fic I keep talking about)

The metal circle was knocked inward. It fell onto the basement floor with a hard thud, kicking up a puff of dust. Shoyo glimpsed a slice of the semi-dark inside: the innards of Saint Winona’s wall, wires and circular metal things with tiny glowing lights. Machines that kept his city alive. He’d seen some of those things in textbooks long ago.

The arm of a filthy spacesuit shot out of the hole and grasped for purchase on the basement floor.

A man with dirty, dark hair crawled out through the small hole. He was smeared with dust; his space suit looked ancient and strange, like dirty white leather. There was no helmet around the collar, only a metal collar at the neck of the outfit where one might have once fit on.

His hand slipped on the metal circle he’d cut out of the wall and fell forward onto his chest. He pushed the circle out of the way with a furious shout that made Shoyo gasp aloud in fear.

That’s when the man noticed he wasn’t alone in the room. That’s when he finally raised his head and showed his face and Shoyo’s soul writhed inside the cage of his frozen body.

The face—the face—his face—

He had Atsumu’s face.

40) If someone were to make fanart of your work, what fic or scene would you hope to see?

I have daydreamed of commissioning some artist many months in the future to draw scene in Darcia, where Oikawa is a demon a la FHQ but with some eldritch qualities. There’s also many dragons in the fic.

I have this scene in my head of Oikawa in the foreground, walking away from the camera towards four or five dragons backed up against a huge cave/dungeon wall in the background. They're like 20-50 foot tall beasts, who are all terrified of this human sized creature because he's going to kill them and he CAN. They are shooting fire or trying to claw at him but he is magically shielded and nothing works. The point is to amplify how utterly horrifying and powerful Oikawa is even in the face of gigantic and powerful monsters.

But imagining scared dragons backed up against a wall afraid of a small human can easily make them look goofy, unfortunately like an elephant scared of a mouse...so it would be a tough balancing act to portray the scene as scary instead of accidentally comedic.

41) Do you tend to reread fics or are you a one-and-done kind of person?

I am mostly a one-and-done person. There are a handful of fics I might return to to read specific scenes or chapters but I basically never re-read entire fics again. The memory of the fic and me appreciating it afterward is usually enough.

42) What’s the last fic you read? Do you recommend it?

I've been slowly going through the "horror" tag in the Haikyuu fandom, a kind of slim tag with only 400-some fics out of the whole Haikyuu section which is probably to be expected...

But I found this total gem called YACHI HITOKA: ZOMBIE SLAYER.

It's only 3 chapters long and not updated for many months now. But the chapters are quite long, and intense and horrific and WHOOO what a rush! I think it's a fantastic read for horror fans. Yachi is far from being a "zombie slayer" so far but I can see that there's tiny bits of growth in her bravery, inching their way up. I absolutely recommend it.

I left a huge glowing review to the author almost a month ago but they moderate comments and mine still hasn't appeared tho :0)

43) Do you take a sadistic joy in whumping your characters, or are you more the "If you hurt them I would kill everyone and then myself" kind of person?

Closer to the “taking joy” in it end of things I guess. I enjoy writing characters going through intense action or adventures or escapes. If that involves pain, fighting, getting hurt, etc then hell yeahhhhh.

44) What mistakes do you keep making no matter how many times your beta corrects you?

Me thriving with no beta and dick flapping in the wind: YEEEEEE

45) Do you want to break your readers‘ heart or make them laugh?

Leaning more towards the heartbreaking side. But being able to come up with a truly funny line is an accomplishment as well, and harder I think.

46) How would you describe your style? (Character/emotion/action-driven, etc)

Intense, more focus on narration than dialogue, viscerally ugly and suspenseful, romance is always at least a little creepy lol…I wonder how other people see my work in general like this.

47) How many times do you usually revise your fic/chapter before posting?

It gets combed through several times as I write, then one last once-over after I finish the chapter. Therefore the “rough draft” (after getting to the end of the draft) and “final draft” look very similar.

48) What do you look for in a beta?

#44 ^^^

49) Do you ever get rude reviews and how do you deal with them?

I can only think of one rude review I got, it was for my naruto/pokemon crossover story on FFN that I got 26 chapters into before basically abandoning it in 2014-ish. Someone said basically “no one cares about these characters except ur ugly cringe ass”. I just ignored it.

Though nowadays sometimes I hope a hater would comment on my fics because I think coming up with a sniping comeback, and then freezing the comment thread so mine stands as the last word in the conversation, would be so fuckin gooooood…

50) How long is your longest fic?

Well uhhh I think that’s the Naruto/Maximum Ride crossover I wrote in 8th and 9th grade and I just had to check, it was 25 chapters when I abandoned it and 227k long! Cringe af now but lord I was so proud of it at the time.

People reviewing that story gave me a real-life confidence boost to the point that in 9th grade, classmates and teachers and people I didn’t talk to at all actually noticed and started chatting me up, because I was suddenly more interesting and engaging. 9th grade was the start of me understanding how to socialize...because of my fanfiction!

51) What’s your total AO3 word count?

273,602 (wow only slightly longer than the 8th-9th grade fic maximum ride crossover fic WOW?)

52) Do you respond to comments, why or why not?

If they are long, substantive, or directly ask me a question. Otherwise not usually. I don’t feel the need to respond to every comment when I already wrote the damn story. I also don’t like the idea of half my comment count on a story just puffing my stats by endlessly replying “Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Tha

53) How do you spend your time when it comes to fanfiction? Are you primarily a fic reader, writer, or a perfect 50/50 split of both?

Definitely a writer more than a reader, though I’d say in high school it was a 50/50 split. Somehow I read more but also wrote overall more…because I didn’t have to work aghgnghgh

54) What’s your favorite part about the fanfiction writing process?

The fact that I can do what-EVER the fuck I want. I can write batshit insane endings. I can add “obsessive/possessive behavior” magic fairy dust to my favorite characters to make them have sexy interactions with my faves that appeal to my silly fictional tastes. I can give someone an unexplained Raikou companion in a universe that has no other Pokemon and not explain it if I don’t feel like it. I can indulge in anything, dress it up how I please, and still practice a fun and interesting skill, and CREATE! I LOVE CREATING STORIES!

55) Of the characters you write for, which is your favorite? Has that choice been swayed at all by your followers/readers’ reactions to certain ones?

It has to be Sakura Haruno, doesn’t it? Even long past the end of Naruto, she lives on in my heart, in my beloved story Chasm…I own three figures of her for god’s sake. I started caring about her in middle school and I was part of the growing “MultiSaku” fanfic scene in the late 00’s and 2010’s. Even after all these years and all these fandoms and stories and life events and things I had to pass through and carry…I never let go of her.

And no my choice of favorite character to write for is not swayed by any other people, lol please.

56) What’s something about your writing that you pride yourself on?

I think I write very good intense action scenes. Scenes that feel like a razor’s edge slicing your skin that might penetrate and cut through you. I re-read my own action scenes a lot and still feel proud of the ugly, harsh imagery and the suspenseful nature of a movement making you unsure if it will turn out safe for the character or not. I love thinking up “cinematography” for movements like that in my head.

57) Do you prefer editing as you write, or waiting until it’s finished?

Mostly edit as I write, with a final pass over after the draft is finished.

58) What part of the writing process do you enjoy the most? (Brainstorming, outlining, writing, editing, etc)

I feel like I answered this. 58 questions into the 78 I've realized some of these questions are rather similar to each other. The writing part is the best.

59) Does anyone in your personal life know you write fic? if not, would you tell anyone?

My bff and I have been into fanfiction since 2006. Though I don’t think I told her my FFN name until 2010 or 2011. More than a little disappointed that she doesn’t read my fics anyway because we’re not into the same genre and she’s not a person I can talk to about writing either so wtf was the point. Also my brother knows I write fic and is friendly/nice about the concept of fic in general. I certainly don’t share with him but he doesn’t mock fanfic as cringe or a waste or anything.

These two are exceptions. For the most part, HELL NOOOOOOO. I never plan to tell anyone irl I write fic, it is too private and precious to me. Someone irl finding out about my fanfiction or fandom things in general is truly my worst nightmare.

60) Have you had a writer you admire comment on your fic? What was that like?

Yes, a couple of times. Their words meant more than the average commenter of course because they’re on a pedestal in my mind. I know their exceptional work so they damn well know what they’re talking about when they say similar things about my work. That’s the kind of comment I will keep in my email inbox for days if not weeks for easy re-reading.

61) Why do you continue writing fics?

Because I love them. Because I love the art of translating a character into a plot of my making. I love placing my favorite characters into a canvas I made and making them a part of it, and making something that is perfectly suited to ME. It has my colors, only mine, it’s my love letter addressed to me.

62) Thoughts on cliffhangers?

Not many thoughts on cliffhangers. If I write one, I rarely think of it as such, more like, this is a suitable place to end the chapter if possible. The usual “it sucks if you’re a reader, gotta wait for the next update, aw man” whatever.

63) Something you hate to see in smut.

Dirty talk involving one character calling the other a whore or slut. Once in a while I’m into it, usually I’m not. I think I’ve got a bone to pick with…humiliation, or something? Sometimes it can be hot as hell, sometimes it borderline offends me. And that’s a really popular and hell, a NORMAL thing for people to do, like some of the most basic dirty talk there is, so it’s hard to dodge. I have to just scowl a little and keep reading.

64) Something you love to see in smut.

One character acting like an animal. Rutting, biting, licking. Possessive behavior and body worship. Character calling the other one “mine” can be a lame fanfic stereotype but I’m SO INTO THAT

65) Tell us about what you’re most looking forward to writing – in your current project, or a future project

Really looking forward to the end battle in my Haikyuu fantasy au where Kageyama is a mage and Hinata is a unicorn. The battle involves KageHina (both human at this time) and also mage Oikawa and Iwaizumi who is in human form but by this point everyone in the story knows he’s actually a dragon. The villain is a unicorn OC who’s filled with rage, resentment and bitterness and wants to make others suffer, she’s a sad bitch but mostly a petty bitch.

In my head, the battle happens to the tune of the final battle theme in Elden Ring (which I have not played) and I just loooove what happens to the villain at the end. It is beyond satisfying, and unexpected, I think. But god, that’s like 50k words away at LEAST.

66) How do you deal with writing pressure (ie. pressure to update, negative comments, deadlines, etc.)?

My pressure comes 95% from ME feeling bad about how long I take. I deal with it by…trying to fucking write and also a lot of feeling bad, idk.

My update schedule is so slow that the shit mentioned in the question does not affect me at all. Also, those things don’t really happen to me? I get almost no negative comments, hell I kind of dream of getting a negative comment because I like thinking up snide, uncaring, rude etc., ways I’d snap back at them. No way in hell would they make me write faster.

67) Do you prefer prompts and challenges, or completely independent ideas?

I don’t really do prompts or challenges. The closest I can think is a few prompt asks I did her on tumblr, years ago. I did maybe 3 in my entire life. Not really a prompt person. I got WIPs out the wazoo, like I need more on my plate.

68) What, if anything, do you do for inspiration?

Lately I’ve been doing the absolute normie shit of making Pinterest boards. I have about 15 boards that are dedicated to either a specific fanfic or just a common theme in many fics (board for dragons, board for fantasy castles and towns etc). I usually don’t need to like manually force inspiration though, it comes when it comes and I prefer that to needing to use Pinterest tbh.

69) What work of yours, if any, are you the most embarrassed about existing?

Oh man, I don’t even know if I want to say the names of some of them haha. Probably one of my various MultiSaku stories from my Stormdragon6 account on FFN, which I’ve had since 2005 when I had just started middle school…I didn't use AO3 until 2014-15 and most of my FFN stories are NOT cross posted there.

I’m sure there’s many on the FFN account that are equally cringe and I don’t really want to look. They meant a lot to me when I wrote them and took quite a lot of effort and time for a teen to do…I’ll keep them in my mind that way instead.

70) When asked, are you embarrassed or enthusiastic to tell people that you write?

Outside of fandom social media I don’t EVER tell people I write, period. My mom knows I wrote the middle school talking dragon book and STILL once in a while says I should publish it bc she hasn’t read a book in about 15 years and is a horrible judge of good writing. I keep telling her I “forgot” where I put that book but it’s gathering dust in my garage and I hope she eventually goes senile and forgets about it.

Otherwise I haven’t mentioned writing as a hobby to anyone irl but my bff and brother since like 2012. It is EXTREMELY private to me.

71) When it comes to more complicated narratives, how do you keep track of outlines, characters, development, timeline, ect.?

I used to just keep two Microsoft Word documents per story (at least longer ones) one for the story itself, whatever most recent chapter I was working on, and a second one for the notes/outline on that story. Sometimes I kept a third one for storing axed/rewritten passages of writing. It was tedious but I knew no other way.

I’m glad I have Scrivener now to keep all those things in one “document” basically which makes it easier to look through it all and compare things side to side.

72) What order do you write in? front of book to back? chronological? favorite scenes first? something else?

Chronological! I can’t imagine writing any other way omg ew. Writing a big epic scene when I have'nt written or decided the buildup sounds like a horrible idea. It simply will not be written the same as it would when I know and have experienced all that led up to it.

73) What do you think makes your writing stand out from other works?

I’m having a lot of trouble with this one. Any quality I can think of, some other people surely do as well. I like focusing on dangerous, scary conflicts and situations that are more horror movie-esque than like, fun? I bring in magical or supernatural creatures whenever I can. I love writing chase scenes especially between two parties in a ship. I ship damn near anything. I have my own flavor when you mix these things together, I guess.

74) You’ve posted a fic anonymously. How would someone be able to guess that you’d written it?

This is getting kind of repetitive again. The stuff I mentioned above. Maybe if there’s a lot of horses, unicorns or talking animals that might be a sign that it’s me…using the possessive behavior tag…shipping Sakura with a man who tried to kill her at least once…nowadays I think the horses/unicorn inclusion would be the biggest clue lol.

75) What scene in [Fanfic Name] took the longest to write? What was difficult about it?

There’s a few scenes in Chasm (MadaSaku dark fantasy, Madara is a huge wingless gryphon) where Sakura has to talk to Madara and/or the Uchiha clan, and they’re big scary monsters and she’s terrified. Pushing these conversations along to get to the point of them while not having the two parties just insulting/dismissing the other, trying to build up a bit of a relationship between them at the same time…was really hard! Those Madara-Sakura talking scenes are HARD! I remember being stuck on the dialogue several times, for ages each time. Gah!!

76) Did you have any ideas that didn’t make the final cut of [Fanfic Name]?

Lots. There’s several stories of mine with pieces that I scrapped (put in the 3rd word doc) and didn’t use. I remember writing that I scrapped 12,000 words of Chasm chapter two back in the day.

Oh I had a scene in the AtsuHina sci-fi horror recently where Atsumu and Hinata get into a van that’s basically a taxi. Suna, Atsumu's friend, is the driver and interrupts when AtsuHina are feeling each other up in the backseat. I forget the timing exactly…but Atsumu playfully asks if Hinata has ever fucked in a taxi, and Suna is right there looking through his little divider window and replies, “* I’ve * fucked in a taxi,” and Atsumu shouts at him to listen to his fucking podcasts and shut the window already.

I thought it was really funny, but I cut it for time/word count and not really fitting the tone of growing ominousness. That chapter ended up at 15k without that scene which was 1k by itself.

77) Do you have a favorite scene you’ve written from [Fanfic Name] story/chapter?

Yes, I really like the writing I used in the “alien Oikawa finally breaks into the ship” scene in Day of the Navigator, end of Chapter 2.

I think its ominous tone is strong at the start, which bursts into shock and horror when Iwaizumi sees the alien at the end of the hallway and almost faints, he imagines his dead captain Ushijima to fucking get up and move, and he bravely stands against the charging alien with a flamethrower. Catches him in a net shot out of a....net gun...first, then burns him with the flamethrower up close. Alienkawa can regenerate tho and will NOT be deterred from claiming and fucking his cute humanbride so he shakes it off.

But god, it was fantastic to write.

Oh my god I wrote 77 answers (this took 2 days). Why can’t I write fanfic at this kind of speed. I guess because following a plot matters and takes much more care than 77 individual questions jeeeeeeeeesus I answered 77 questions…sending my corpse to Jammie in the mail

@spacejammie-eimmajecaps

#fanfiction #personal #JAMMIIIIIIEEEEEE

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lesfeldickbiblestudy · 1 year ago

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Through the Bible with Les Feldick LESSON 3 * PART 4 * BOOK 81 DANIELS’S PRAYER AND PROPHECY - 4 Daniel 9:3-24 Okay, program number four this afternoon and for those of you joining us on television, it’s just another program today, tomorrow, or whatever. I trust most of you out there know we’re just an informal Bible study. I like to emphasize the study because that’s why we can go back and forth—compare Scripture with Scripture. And we’re going to do this right away now, right at the beginning of this program. We’re going to prove something by just comparing Scripture with Scripture. And again, I want to thank all the folks here in the studio for coming in. Some have come all the way from southern Oklahoma and some came from Oklahoma City and others from other distance places. We’ve got one couple from Minneapolis, I know. So, we just appreciate people coming in and doing this with us. All right, we’re going to go right back to where we left off. Daniel is still in his prayer, but he’s coming to the end of it now. We’re going to move on into another basic part of the Book of Daniel—that is prophecy. Daniel is a prophet, and I’m going to show you that even the Lord Jesus Himself referred to him as such. So, let’s come into Daniel chapter 9 and continue on where we left off. We’ll just sort of skim through these verses, because verse 24 is where we really want to start in this program. Daniel 9:20-21 “And whiles I was speaking, and praying, (He’s getting to the end of his prayer now.) and confessing my sin and the sin of my people Israel, and presenting my supplication before the LORD my God for the holy mountain of my God; (Which, of course, is Jerusalem.) 21. Yea, whiles I was speaking in prayer, even the man (We refer to him as the angel.) Gabriel whom I had seen in the vision at the beginning, being caused to fly swiftly, touched me about the time of the evening oblation.” Now that makes me have to stop and remind people. Throughout Israel’s history the supernatural was not all that uncommon. The appearance of angels, the appearance of these visions, and the miraculous as referred to in our last program—the opening of the Red Sea and all these things, the defeats of Samson. So, you see, throughout the Old Testament economy the supernatural was not, like I said, uncommon. You come all the way up for the time of Christ to appear and who appeared to Mary? Well, an angel. Well, she wasn’t all that shook up. My goodness, if an angel appeared to one of us, they’d probably have to lock us up the next day because we wouldn’t be able to handle it mentally. But they did. They were used to these things. All right, so Gabriel appears to Daniel, and he tells Daniel—you’re going to have a specific special revelation of the future. He said: Daniel 9:22b-23a “…O Daniel, I am now come forth to give thee skill and understanding. 23. At the beginning of thy supplications (That is this prayer that we’ve been looking at for three half hours.) the commandment came forth, and I am come to show thee; for thou art greatly beloved:…” Now I’ve got to stop. Whenever I teach Daniel, normally we also make a lot—and I’m going to be doing it in this half hour—what other book of the Bible do we always tie with Daniel? Revelation. All right, who wrote the Book of Revelation? John. And what was John called? The Beloved. Isn’t that amazing! Daniel writes this prophecy and he’s called the Beloved. John writes Revelation and he, too, is called the Beloved. Now, maybe that doesn’t mean much to you, but I think it does. It’s kind of an intricate connection here. Daniel 9:23b “…for thou art greatly beloved: therefore understand the matter, and consider the vision.” In other words, don’t take it lightly. Now here comes this prophetic vision which becomes, in my book at least, the very foundation of all Biblical prophecy concerning the end-time. Not so much concerning Christ’s first coming, although that’s in here. But it is basically the foundation of all of our end-time study of prophecy. All right, here it is.

Daniel 9:24a “Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people…” Now I have to stop, because I have gotten tons of questions over the years: why do you associate weeks with years? Well, let’s just see what the Book says about it. We know that a week is a period of seven years when it’s spoken of as Daniel uses it here. All right, skip across, at least in my Bible, to verse 27, so that we have a jumping off place. Because I’m going to prove first that this word weeks is a period of seven years. Verse 27 of Daniel 9 and I’m just using the verse now to define the word weeks. Daniel 9:27 “And he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week: (Well, how long is that one week? Well, it’s seven years. How do I know? Turn all the way up—well, let’s finish the verse first.) and in the midst of the week (Now watch that.) in the midst of the week he (Speaking, of course, of the anti-Christ.) shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease, and for the overspreading of abominations (such wickedness that you and I cannot even begin to comprehend) he (the anti-Christ) shall make it (That is the restored Temple.) desolate, even until the consummation, (or the end of those seven years) and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate.” All right, now let’s just qualify that a week is seven years. That’s my point. Jump up with me now to Matthew 24 verse 15. This is in the Lord’s earthly ministry, toward the end of it, of course. This whole chapter is prophesying these final seven years that Daniel spoke of in verse 27. Matthew 24:15a “When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet,…” And when did Daniel say it would happen? In the middle of the week. Don’t forget that now. Daniel says in the middle of the week this anti-Christ, or the prince that shall come as he calls him, will come into the Temple and defile it. All right, Jesus is putting his stamp of approval on that. He says: Matthew 24:15 “When ye therefore shall see that abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, (in the middle of that week) (whoso readeth, let him understand:)” All right, that’s all we need of that verse for the time being. We’ll be hitting it again later. Now, jump all the way up to Revelation where, like we just said, the other Beloved of Scripture is writing, John, and turn with me to chapter 11. Revelation chapter 11 and we’re just going to be looking at time-factors. I’m not going to associate anything with it. I just want you to see the time-factor. Revelation chapter 11 verse 2, all got it? No, I’ve got to wait. You know, I’ve said it before, my listening audience says, Les, I appreciate that you wait so I can find the Scriptures. Okay, here we are. Revelation 11:2 “But the court which is without the temple leave out, and measure it not; for it is given unto the Gentiles: (Now here it comes.) and the holy city (Jerusalem, the Gentiles) shall they tread under foot forty and two months.” How long is 42 months? Three-and-a-half years. Okay. Next verse, verse 3: Revelation 11:3 “And I will give power unto my two witnesses, (and these two witnesses) and they shall prophesy (or preach, or speak forth) a thousand two hundred and sixty days, clothed in sackcloth.” How long is twelve hundred and sixty days? Three-and-a-half years. All right, now let’s go over to chapter 12. Now remember what I’m establishing—that this week that Daniel speaks of is seven years, and it is always split in half: three-and-a-half and three-and-a-half. From the opening day until the abomination of the anti-Christ going in and defiling the Temple are three-and-a-half years. From the abomination until the end and Christ’s Second Coming are the second three-and-a-half years. That’s all I’m trying to establish. All right, chapter 12 and verse 6, now we’re speaking of the remnant of Israel that’s going to flee from Jerusalem to their place of safety. Verse 6: Revelation 12:6

“And the woman (this remnant) fled into the wilderness, where she hath a place prepared of God, that they (the Godhead) should feed her there (or provide all her needs) a thousand two hundred and sixty days.” How long? Three-and-a-half years. You just can’t escape it. All right, now come across the page, in my Bible anyway, and let’s see, up there in verse 14. Revelation 12:14a “And to the woman (this same escaping remnant of Israel) and to the woman were given two wings of a great eagle,…” Now remember, Exodus spoke of the same thing concerning Israel leaving Egypt as they flew with wings of an eagle. So, it doesn’t mean they’re going to fly. It’s just going to be a supernatural escape route. Revelation 12:14a “And to the woman were given two wings of a great eagle, that she might fly into the wilderness, into her place,…” That place where God is going to protect that remnant of Israel for those last three-and-a-half years. And I think it’ll be five million Jews, because Zechariah tells us it will be one-third of Israel. And today, Israel’s population is fifteen million. I think we’re close enough that I can use the one-third: five million. Well, that’s not much difference than what The Exodus was. You know, I get encouraged from time-to-time, and I don’t get the big head over it. Don’t worry. But way, way back when I first started teaching some of these things, I came to the conclusion that the number of Jews coming out of Egypt under Moses had to be between three and five million. Now that’s a big gap, I know. And if you’ll remember when I first taught this on television, I likened it to Dallas and Fort Worth. Remember that? I said Dallas/Fort Worth together is little over three million. Can you image those two cities moving out in mass with all their flocks and herds? Well, that was Israel in The Exodus. But I’ve even expanded it to mean it could be five to seven. And I’ve now read some others that are using those same numbers—that it could have been as high as seven million Jews that came out of Egypt. Now, I know that’s pressing the envelope, so I’ll keep it back at three to five. But anyway, here we have it: this great exodus from, not Egypt, now, but from Jerusalem—out into a place of safety which is almost identical to The Exodus going out to Mount Sinai. It’s supernatural, again. All right, so this remnant of Israel will escape Jerusalem under the nose of the man anti-Christ, and she’s going to go to her place. Revelation 12:14b “…where she is nourished (Now, here’s my time-factor again.) for a time, (one year) and times, (plus two, for a total of three) and half a time (for a total of three-and-one-half years),…” Now, that should be enough to settle it that a week in Daniel is seven years. A half of seven is three-and-a-half. Okay, now we’re ready to go back to Daniel, hopefully. I should never again have another question: why do you call a week seven years? All right, back to Daniel chapter 9 verse 24. Daniel 9:24a “Seventy weeks…” Of years. Now, if you know your math, that’s 7 x 70. And that’s how many? Four hundred and ninety years. Is that unusual in God dealing with Israel? No, over and over He uses that same number. Sometimes it’s 430, but 490 over and over throughout Israel’s history was a period of God’s dealing with the Nation of Israel. Here’s another one: four hundred and ninety years or-- Daniel 9:24 “Seventy weeks are determined upon (My people? No. What’s the word?) thy people…” Well, why did God say thy people, when other times He says my people? Well, it depends on Israel’s spiritual relationship. When Israel is in right relationship with God, it’s what? My people. But when they’re out there in unbelief and rebellion—whether it was Moses or whether it was David or whether it was Daniel, it’s what? Thy people. Now—no, I’m not going to look. I’m not sure what the verse is. But when we come to the Second Coming and Israel suddenly realizes who He is, then what does the Scripture say? God will say they are My people.

And Israel will say He is our God. But in the interim, no, it’s thy people. See that? Little intricacies of Scripture. All right, verse 24 again: Daniel 9:24a “Seventy weeks (490 years) are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city, (That is Jerusalem.) to finish (In other words, to finalize the transaction between God and evil.) to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins, (Which, of course, was the work of the Cross.) and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness,…” Which is a reference to the what, again? The Kingdom! Oh, don’t lose the process. Go back to Psalms chapter 2. I have to use it over and over, because this is the simplest outline of prophecy in Scripture. And here this is fulfilling it to the exact words. Psalms chapter 2, some day you’re all going to know these verses by memory. Psalms chapter 2 and let’s start at verse 1. I just love these verses, because they are so explicit and simple. Now this is David writing in 1,000 B.C. with regard to Christ’s first coming. Psalms 2:1-2a “Why do the heathen (In this case, it’s the Romans.) why do the heathen rage, and the people (Israel) image a vain thing? 2. The kings of the earth (the Romans) set themselves, and the rulers (the religious leaders of Israel) take counsel together, against the LORD,…” Now goodness sakes, when did they do that? The night of His arrest, the night of His arrest they’re in the Garden. What was the conspiracy? Why, we’ll point out who He is; you arrest Him; and we’ll do the rest. And you know what happened. They gave him a mock trial. Judas betrayed Him; the Romans took over and through it all the Crucifixion. But way back here in 1,000 B.C.-- Psalms 2:2b-3 “…they take counsel together, against the LORD, (That is God the Son.) and against his anointed, (the Messiah) saying, 3. Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us.” We’ll not let God rule over us. All right, now here’s God’s response from Heaven. Psalms 2:4-5a “He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: (Not a laugh of comedy, but a laugh of ridicule and scorn.) the Lord shall have them (That is the whole human race—Gentile as well as Jew.) he shall have them in derision. 5. Then…” There’s the time-word now. We’re moving on in time. After they have rejected God’s anointed, then God will move in with His next point in human history. And what is it? Psalms 2:5 “Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure.” The Tribulation—the wrath and vexation. Let me stop a minute. How many people in the world’s leadership—whether it’s America, South America; whether it’s the Orient or the Middle East or Europe—how many of the world’s leaders have any concept of this coming seven years? None! I would dare say there isn’t a leader in the world that knows that these horrible seven years of God’s wrath is right out in front of us. The world’s getting ready for it. Everything that’s taking place around the world today is just screaming at us that the end is winding up. But they don’t know. And they think we’re crazy. Isn’t it something? Those of us who have the knowledge, we have the wisdom, and they think we’ve lost it. They think we should be locked up. I trust you read what’s coming out of our government. We’re extreme right fanatics, you know. They’ll want to lock us up before long. Well, so be it. At least we know that we know what we’re talking about. All right, so now read on. After they’ve rejected Him, then He’s going to come at the human race in His wrath, not His grace and mercy in this case, but His wrath and vexation. Then what’s the next event? Psalms 2:6 “Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion.” And what’s that? The Kingdom. The Millennium! All prophesied by David in 1,000 B.C. That’s why I love this portion. It’s so simple. My goodness, anybody should be able to understand that after the rejection would come the vexation and then would come the what? The King and the Kingdom.

How did Peter put it? You remember back a few tapings we were dealing with Peter, and I used it at the beginning of every taping session. First, the suffering, and then the glory that would follow. Well, here it is with regard to the human race. They’re going to suffer like you and I can never imagine. But what’s it going to lead to? The return of Christ and the glory which would follow. And, of course, that is the real reason that Peter taught, too. It was that Christ would suffer by His rejection, but what would be the end result? His coming in glory and power. First, the suffering, and then the glory which would follow. All right, now verse 6 again, after the wrath and vexation-- Psalms 2:6 “Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion.” The millennial reign of Christ. All right, let’s go back to Daniel chapter 9, and we’ll read on a little bit. I don’t know if I’m going to have time to go to the board like I wanted to, but we’ll play it by ear. Daniel chapter 9 and reading on in verse 24. Daniel 9:24b “…to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins, (the work of the Cross where He took on Himself the sin of the world) and to make reconciliation for iniquity,…” All right, now that brings a point. A lot of people just can’t comprehend it, and I suppose they think I’m out in left field. But I want you to think. When Christ suffered and died, the first inkling of what He was going to accomplish we get from John the Baptist. And how did John the Baptist really open Christ’s earthly ministry? What was his statement? “Behold, the Lamb of God which (What?) taketh away the sin of the world.” How much? All of it! I’ve been teaching this for thirty years. That work of the Cross was so complete that God the Father was satisfied and was willing to forgive every sin that had ever been committed. It’s done. But, it goes for nothing until it’s appropriated how? By Faith. That’s why it’s so ridiculous that people reject this message of hope and the promise of Eternal Life by believing that Jesus died for our sins, was buried, and rose again. Why do they hate it so, when it’s so simple? He has paid the sin debt for every human being who ever lived. From Adam until the last person in human history, it’s all been done for—paid for, forgiven. All right, but now I’ve got to give you another word. I’ve only got three minutes. Oh, my goodness. Turn all the way up to II Corinthians chapter 5. This is what Daniel has already prophetically—(No, not Daniel—yeah, Daniel. Couldn’t remember whether it was David or Daniel.)—Daniel is prophesying this would come. II Corinthians chapter 5 verse 18. Oh, listen, this is mind-boggling. But the Book says it. And if the Book says it, God expects us to believe it. That’s where we become responsible. II Corinthians 5:18 “And all things are of God, who hath (Past tense, it’s a done deal.) reconciled us to himself (Now, of course, Paul is writing to believers, naturally. So for us, of course, we know that we have been reconciled. But that’s not the point I’m trying to make.) He hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, (And, of course, reference is to that finished work of the Cross.) and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation;” That we can tell the world, hey, you’ve been reconciled. God has already done everything to bring you to Himself. Now here it comes, verse 19. II Corinthians 5:19 “To wit (that is to say), that God was in Christ, reconciling (The Body? No. The who?) the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath (Past tense, it’s a done deal.) hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation. (Of who? The whole world.)” Every human being who ever lived God considered him as forgiven and reconciled. Now, I’ve got to use the forgiven word. I didn’t do that yet. Turn from II Corinthians and go on over to Colossians. I’ve already made mention of John the Baptist, “The Lamb of God who taketh away the sin of the world.

” Not just the believer, but the world! The unsaved world goes to their doom not because they had no opportunity. It’s because they wouldn’t believe it. They wouldn’t take it by faith. And that’s what makes it so pitiful—that the vast majority of the human race walks all this underfoot, disregarding it rather than taking it by faith. Oh, it’s awful. But, you see, they can’t handle it. Okay, I’ve got to do it quickly. Verse 13 of Colossians 2: Colossians 2:13 “And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath he quickened (made us alive) together with him, having (What?) forgiven you (How much?) all trespasses (our sins);” Past. Present. And future. But it doesn’t mean a thing until you appropriate it by faith. And, oh, it’s so hard for the world to see it.

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alarajrogers · 7 months ago

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Personally as a former Catholic I find the OP's stance to be bordering on heretical, certainly replete with the sin of Pride.

Human beings wrote the Bible. In Christian and Catholic belief, they were inspired by God. But they wrote it. And they wrote it in a really ancient foreign language that most of us do not understand or speak. And, being human and imperfect, even if they were inspired by God, they may have filtered their inspiration through their own biases.

So who the fuck made OP's interpretation of the Bible "the only one true word of God?"

All believers in God -- all believers in any religion with a god -- have to interpret their holy works as best they can, and try to follow the laws set out by that God, if they want to be observant believers. And sure, you can say "I believe my interpretation of God's word to be correct." But it's incredibly prideful to say "Mine is definitely correct and anyone who disagrees with me is going against God."

There is substantial evidence that what was translated as "You can't be gay" was actually "Don't molest children". I mean, I think everyone, Christians, Muslims, Jews, atheists, and believers of any other religion, can agree that that makes sense! Of course a good and loving God would tell humanity, don't molest children! Also, the sin of the Sodomites was wanting to rape Lot's guests, which, a, violation of hospitality rules, and b, rape. Yes, God thinks rape is bad. Meanwhile in the New Testament, Paul, who said you can't be gay, also said slaves should submit to their masters, women shouldn't talk in church, and oh, yeah, he never met Jesus Christ. He showed up one day and said "Christ appeared to me in a vision and told me to convert!" and everyone believed him. His ideas got in because he knew how to play politics. Jesus never said a single thing about being gay. (Also, you could interpret the Book of John as saying that Jesus and John were lovers. You can easily interpret it as saying they were good friends, but, I mean, "the apostle beloved of Jesus" and shit like that? Jesus was also a 33 year old rabbi who wasn't married. For that time period that would have been weird.)

So you can be a devout Christian who believes that God said don't molest children, which is fine, and that Jesus said nothing against gays, and the dude who did can be ignored and in fact should be because he was never an apostle and a lot of his opinions are toxic, and come to the conclusion that God never said don't be gay. A devout Christian, who believes in the Bible. (At least, the Old Testament and the Gospels. It was human men who decided which letters and other errata ended up in the New Testament.)

Now, I am not a devout Christian... I am an agnostic who is absolutely, 100 percent, religiously convinced that the Christian God does not exist, and I can present evidence. But I know devout Christians who believe that God is love, that all forms of love between adults are acceptable to God, and they can back up their beliefs with the Bible just like the OP can. In this day and age, you don't get to say "My interpretation of the Bible is the only correct one." That implies that you, the special snowflake, have the ability to read the imperfect words of Man attempting to convey the word of God, and you can perfectly interpret them to understand what God was truly saying. No. That's arrogance. You say you know the mind of God. No. You do not. Your God is too large to be perfectly known by any imperfect human. The best you can say is, "In my opinion, this is what God was saying." To insist otherwise, that you have the One Truth, is the sin of Pride.

And as a former Catholic, I'm not interested in listening to arrogant sinners committing the sin of Pride by telling me their view of God is perfect and true and everyone else is wrong. Right off the bat, the fact that you think your interpretation is the only possible one makes your interpretation flawed, because it's coming from someone who struts around displaying their flaws and crowing about them. If you're not humble, if you're not willing to admit you could be wrong, then you're a very bad Christian and no Christian should be listening to you.

“At least it's not ferociously attacking God quite as directly as Steven Universe did…”

Not that I’m surprised by this statement, but can you elaborate on this? Kinda intrigued by your thoughts on Steven Universe.

Okie dokie, you’re not the only one who has asked me about this, so I suppose I’ll poke the hornet’s nest. 😅 I haven’t talked about this before because I assumed that everyone who wanted to hear my kinds of opinions on stories wasn’t watching or interested in Steven Universe.

It’s like asking vegetarian if they enjoyed a turkey dinner. The turkey dinner was so obviously not made for vegetarians to enjoy, so why would the vegetarian even bother analyzing the turkey?

But I think if some people are asking me why I think Steven Universe is anti-God (of the Bible) its because maybe they don’t know what the turkey is. Not completely. (Maybe not you, because like you said, you’re not surprised by my comment.) So I’ll explain my thoughts on Steven Universe.

If you’re just following me because you liked some stuff I posted, but didn’t realize that I’m a Bible-believing Christian and don’t want to hear about it, unfollow me now. Because I’m going to talk about some hot button issues here and the trolls will come out.

Steven Universe is really well-done. The jokes are funny, the writing is believable, the characters have great chemistry, great design, the concept is fascinating, the slow build-up and reveal of the plot elements is great. But when you watch the throne room scene in the last episode of Season 5 “Change Your Mind,” it’s alarmingly clear how much the whole show is not just settling for defending and championing the LGBTQ+ worldview—it goes all the way to attacking what Christians believe, on the other side.

Anything that’s pro-LGBTQ+ is doing that by default, but this show goes out of its way to do that.

You have to understand: God created and designed us. Deeper than that; He created and designed romantic relationships, and invented marriage. He didn’t just create love—He is love. So when humans come along and do what we’ve always done since the fall, and say, “I’d rather define what Your thing is and how it works for myself, God,” it’s not only an incredible slap in the face, it’s an attack on God’s actual identity—and it’s destructive for us and the people around us. Like a fish insisting it can breathe oxygen.

But Steven Universe goes beyond that. It knows that the Christian worldview is it’s biggest opposition. It digs right down to the heart of the worldview-battle. LGBTQ+ worldview says, “I should get to love what I want and be who I am, because I’m me. Love is love. (By which I mean, any action or relationship I choose to call love is love, because I’m the one calling it that.)”

Biblical worldview says “No, wait, you shouldn’t base your decisions on you alone; what you want changes day to day, and you’re broken, so you can’t ever be satisfied based on what you want—the Bible says God made you for something, and you rejected that, and it broke you. You’re not how you’re meant to be: even what you want and what you think love is is twisted up and can hurt you and others. But if you submit to God He’ll help you, He’ll fix what’s broken and give you new life by making you how you were supposed to be: He’ll live in you and through you.”

Are we beginning to get the picture?

See, the whole thing with the opposing views between LGBTQ+ and Christian people is as old as time. It’s not a new debate. It’s Satan and Eve in the garden. She says, “This is not how God said things should be,” and Satan says, “Are you sure that’s what He said? He knows if you do this thing, you’ll be like Him. You’ll be god: you’ll get to decide ‘how things should be’ for yourself.”

He lied and said that disobedience would satisfy her. That she knew what her own heart needed better than the God that made it did. That the very act of being imperfect would make her godlike.

And then Steven Universe comes along and says “if every pork chop were perfect, we wouldn’t have hotdogs.”

And has a cast of created being characters who’s imperfections (Garnet’s forbidden “love,” Pearl’s obsession, Amethyst’s insecurity) are supposedly “the best thing about them; what makes them who they are.”

And has a main character who used to be a part of the god-like creator relationship, but used her power to come down to earth and completely change who she is into a fully different person.

And has a godlike Creator character who claims she “doesn’t need” her created beings (just like the God of the Bible) but they all have a little part of their creator in them so she has to repress their imperfections; she holds them all to a standard that’s impossible to reach called “perfection” and punishes them when they don’t meet it even though it hurts them to try; she expects them all to do what they were created by her for; she fixes them when they can’t meet her standard by shining her light through them and making them extensions of their Creator.

And has a main character who argues, fights back, tries to stop her, and is answered with lines that sound surprisingly like what LGBTQ+ people hear when Christians argue with them: “you’re only making things worse; you’re just deceiving yourself; even while you resist it your actual light can’t help shining through,” etc.

White Diamond just wants everything to be perfect. Like her. She just wants her created beings to “be themselves.” But what she means is, be how she created them to be.

And she’s the bad guy. She’s playing God in this show, and Rebecca Sugar is saying, “If God is telling us that can only be happy by being perfect, as He is perfect, and doing what He created us to do, then He’s wrong. Our imperfections are what make us special—unique—individuals—free—and there is nobody who has the right to take that freedom away from us, not even out creator!”

And you know what?

If God were like White Diamond, like Rebecca Sugar believes Him to be, Steven Universe would be right.

But He is NOT.

God is not a dictator who forces us to conform to a standard of perfection and then smashes us when we don’t meet it. He is a King who made us perfect to begin with, and we rejected him, because He allowed us to do that. He knew that true love was love that had to be chosen, and He wanted us to love Him by choice, so he gave us the option. But Rebecca Sugar doesn’t understand—there was never “Choose God or Choose Yourself.” There was only, “Choose God or Choose Nothing.” There was nothing except God. Then He created everything. There is no version of reality where you have something better than God, or even slightly less good but different, to pick. You’re not jumping from one ship into a smaller one, but at least it’s yours—you’re jumping from one ship into a void, and then complaining that there’s no other ship. That’s humans. That’s not God. / White Diamond didn’t make her creations perfect (Amethyst) and she didn’t make them for love. She made them for power. That’s not the God of the Bible.

Even when we did choose to try and love ourselves instead of God, and therefore warped our ability to perfectly love at all, He didn’t smash us. True, everything fell and was cursed, which is exactly what He warned us would happen if we chose it, but it was a natural consequence of breaking ourselves. And then He didn’t leave us that way. He didn’t give up on us. And He certainly didn’t just zap us, snap His fingers, quick-fix it and turn us all into robots who are extensions of Him, who say they love Him but only because it’s His voice puppeting us to say it.

No. He came to us, chose to give up His life at the exact point on the timeline when Romans, masters in the art of slow, humiliating, torturous death, would be the ones to carry out His crucifixion, and saved us Himself. Through the sacrifice of His own life. And even then, we still have a choice. We get to choose to accept that incredible self-sacrifice when we don’t deserve it, and be given new life and a relationship with the Creator who knows us and loves us better than we can love ourselves or receive love from others—OR we can just keep stubbornly insisting that our slavery to the opposite of what God wants is somehow freedom, and our twisted versions of love are genuine, and we’re not broken, and die like that. Die broken creatures who lived their whole lives stomping their feet and screaming “I’m not a creature, I’m a god!”

White Diamond sacrifices nothing, because Rebecca Sugar doesn’t know the God of the Bible. She just knows her idea of Him. She’s never actually gotten to know Him. If she had, she’d learn how silly and twisted her idea is.

Because you know what, yeah, if every pork chop were perfect, we wouldn’t have hot dogs. But people aren’t pork chops. And hot dogs have flavor (not better than pork chops) but they are awful for you.

Christians aren’t perfect cuts of meat with no individuality or flavor. Just because we all know and love the same God doesn’t mean we have no personalities. It just means we don’t think so freaking much about what we are, or who we get to be, or what we like and want. Jeez, what a self-centered, narcissistic, self-obsessed way to live. She plays Steven like he’s this wonder-child, innocent and full of heart, who encourages his friends to love and keep trying. But honestly?

This is very pretty animation but it’s not real. Steven looks happy hugging Steven but self-love doesn’t ultimately get you that.

That’s all based on the premise that what he’s encouraging them to do is actually good, and will make them happy, and will help them love better. And it just won’t. Not in real life. That’s not how any of this works. Self-love is just self-obsession. And that is a sure-fire way to hurt you, and everyone around you.

You’ll never be free by choosing to run to a worse master. You’ll never be satisfied with your crappy attempts at loving yourself, because you were made to be loved flawlessly and forever by someone who is Love Himself.

And choosing to identify with your imperfections doesn’t make you uniquely you. It just makes you exactly like every other human being marching in the same line since the Fall.

White Diamond’s not relational. She’s up high and distant. That’s not God. He made you to be in relationship with Him. He loves you, totally and perfectly, and He proved it by sacrificing for You.

So yeah. That’s the problem with Steven Universe. Come get me, SU fans.

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halfelven · 2 years ago

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All I know about Swedenborgianism is that it was Helen Keller’s religion… what IS it exactly

it's like there was this guy who was like ohhhhhhh i have ~visions~ from God and i Know things that you do Not @ the established church and he was kinda considered heretical but didn't really get punished too much for it and then he went on to inspire a lot of really influential people and i think i've read his entire works bc my f*ther was obsessed with him bc he thought he himself was a prophet of god like swedenborg had been and had all these visions and talked to angels and stuff

i guess where he differs from mainstream christianity is in certain beliefs such as: god is love and never angry so he doesn't send anyone to hell and people of other religions who did their best in life and then die will meet and accept the christian god after death (???)

the trinity is not three persons/beings. but one god only. (??? i personally don't know nor care what the importance of the trinity being one person or three persons is)

idk i'm not an expert. he just has a lot of really weird stuff in his books and i had to listen to it + the bible for 2 - 3 (or 4!) hours every morning before i had eaten and how they were tied to the end of the world that was coming before i was grown up (ha) and so i fuckign hate him but i wasn't really entirely swedenborgian bc my f*ther thought he was a more Important Prophet of God and was more focused on how much god fucking hated everyone (especially people like me) and wanted people to Suffer and be tortured forever in hell (don't get me started on how hell wouldn't work) also he was obsessed with predicting the end of the world based on which pope was going to be the anti-christ

oh and swedenborg thought aliens lived on all the planets in the solar system and had different traits and i refused to believe that

(also my f*ther was weirdly obsessed with fucking balzac's Séraphîta except that Séraphîta is supposed to be "perfect androgyne" and my f*ther was sooooooo insistent that Séraphîta was a woman. which was fun to fight about when i was 9

he was actually just Obsessed with weird european philosophers/theologians/philosophers/freaks from the 1700s and 1800s. and had all these old books from the 1800s that he got when a library in new hampshire was going to toss them. there were so many insane things in them.)

wikipedia quotes under cut:

"In 1745, aged 57, Swedenborg was dining in a private room at a tavern in London. By the end of the meal, a darkness fell upon his eyes, and the room shifted character. Suddenly, he saw a person sitting at a corner of the room, telling him: "Do not eat too much!". Swedenborg, scared, hurried home. Later that night, the same man appeared in his dreams. The man told Swedenborg that he was the Lord, that he had appointed Swedenborg to reveal the spiritual meaning of the Bible and that he would guide Swedenborg in what to write. The same night, the spiritual world was opened to Swedenborg." "According to The Heavenly Doctrine, the Lord had opened Swedenborg's spiritual eyes so that from then on, he could freely visit heaven and hell to converse with angels, demons and other spirits" "Swedenborg wrote about Heaven and Hell based on what he said was revelation from God. According to Swedenborg, God is love itself and intends everyone to go to heaven. That was His purpose for creation. Thus, God is never angry, Swedenborg says, and does not cast anyone into Hell. The appearance of Him being angry at evil-doers was permitted due to the primitive level of understanding of people in Biblical times. Specifically, holy fear was needed to keep the people of those times from sinking irretrievably into the consequences of their evils. The holy fear idea was in keeping with the fundamental truth that even they could understand, that everything comes from Jehovah. In the internal, spiritual sense of the Word, however, revealed in Swedenborg’s works, God can be clearly seen for the loving Person He actually is."

"Swedenborg argued that the Trinity was not three persons—the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—but one, "the Father being the originating divine being itself, the Son the human embodiment of that divine soul, and the Holy Spirit the outflowing activity of Jesus, or the 'Divine Human'"

#that's not even the half of the religious insanity i had to deal with #he was very sadistic and overly invested in torture #and read me the fucking 120 days of sodom when i was /four/#though that was not for religious reasons i don't think #but he had all these old books #and these really graphic and detailed accounts of torture #with illustrations!#if you ever wondered what is wrong with me #well that really is not even the half of it #txt #asks #religous trauma #abuse mention #abuse #tmi in the tags #tmi in general tho #i grew up in the 1800s

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s11e17 · 3 years ago

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for the fic prompt maybe smthn set in s4? dean and cas s4 weird trust that they had to just confess stuff to each other is so interesting to me

tumblr user @grocerystoredean you are a genius, i hope u enjoy :) more under the cut i (once again) wrote way too much / edit: i posted this on ao3 bc people seemed to like it !! wehh thank uuu :)

Well, fuck. Dean exhales into the soupy air, watches the sand dunes shiver light years away. Nothing like the desert Dean knows — his old friend the New Mexico desert, wide and empty, not a soul to see him for miles in any direction except the satellites above. Once — he’d been twenty-three, maybe, a year after Sam leaving him and eleven months from Dad — he got out of his car in a stretch of land where even the highway markers had died off, and he crawled on his hands and knees in the sun and tore his clothes off and just howled at the sky for the joy and the fear of it, fear of that aloneness.

This isn’t that desert. This is the kind of desert they show in movies. This is Lawrence of Arabia desert, Iraq War propaganda desert, Iron Man opening sequence desert. Hell, maybe Dean does know this desert as well as the other. He looks up at the sky and thinks it should be yellower.

When the hue of the sky tilts — or, maybe it’s already been that color, always been that color — he figures it out. “This is a—”

“A dream, yes,” Castiel says from behind him. Dean turns around. He sees him in the poor bastard he’s wearing, but when he looks at him a little sideways, or when the heat covers him, he thinks— Cas has gotta be miles away for the way the sun makes him liquid, the way Dean can see shifting wings like floating lakes behind Cas’s eyes.

Dean shoves his hands in his pockets, ‘cause what else is there to do. “Nice, uh. Nice place.”

“Three men were tested here,” Cas says, which isn’t a reply. He nods at something over Dean’s shoulder, and Dean turns to look, and he sees— or, they’ve been inside of a furnace this whole time. It isn’t hot, though, or at least, not hotter than the desert was. Is. Than the desert-furnace has been.

In that gravel-rough voice of his, Cas quotes: “Blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednago, who hath sent his angel, and delivered his servants that trusted in him, and have changed the king’s word, and yielded their bodies, that they might not serve nor worship any god, except their own God.”

“Throwin’ it back to the Old Testament, huh.” Dean knocks on the inside of the furnace. It’s like a kiln, the kind they ran into at that high school on Samhain. “Thought we were at the end of the book.”

“Linearity is not our… strong suit,” Cas says. It ain’t really a joke, hell, it barely counts as an idiom, but Dean laughs anyway, ‘cause the guy’s trying. And Cas looks half-pleased by Dean’s reaction, too. With that subtle curve in his mouth, the one Dean might be imagining, Cas continues, “I knew even then what this would come to.”

“This?” Dean studies Cas’s face, since he’s the only thing changing, moving in here. The only thing worth lookin’ at. “You mean me?” God, he looks so— he looks so human, somehow. Dean can see flames pouring out of his palms, great wings arcing up like lightning, cleaving the sky— but still. When Dean looks at him head-on, when he smiles, Dean almost feels like he might be— he might— anyway.

“You, Sam, it’s—” Cas shakes his head, or his head shakes him, or— what happens is, Cas corrects himself. “I mean to say that I have already known what this would come to. I know it now. Or what I mean is, I am in this furnace and Nebuchadnezzar is sentencing three men into a furnace and the apocalypse has already begun.”

Sheesh. “You, uh. You angels sure don’t make it easy for us to follow, man.”

“I am not a man.” Dean’s breath catches as Cas— as the furnace becomes, is, has always been the ocean, as Dean swallows saltwater while he swims to the mountain which is Castiel. His feet touch sand and the beach gives way to desert and Castiel puts his hand on Dean’s shoulder, where he touched him before, the first time, and Dean—

“Yeah,” Dean croaks out, and Castiel’s hand tightens and Dean falls to his knees, just like that, splayed out on the hot sand the way he’d crawled out of that car on that desperate hot afternoon when he was twenty-three. “I know. I know, Cas.”

“I have always known about this,” Cas says from above him, hand trailing up to Dean’s collarbone, the side of his neck, his— his jaw, his cheekbone, his hair. Cas puts his hand on the crown of Dean’s head like he’s healing him and Dean shudders. “About you. And yet.”

Dean waits. Cas stands there, wearing his goddamn slacks over his curling lion’s tail, silent.

Dean pushes Cas’s hand off him, stumbles to his feet. Cas doesn’t stop him. “And yet what, Cas?” he asks, hoarsely.

“I don’t know how this ends,” Cas says quietly. He says it like it’s an admission. Like he shouldn’t have said it. He steps back. “I shouldn’t have—”

“This— the apocalypse?” Dean catches Cas’s shoulder, and Cas lets himself be moved. “Look at me. Hey. Look at me.”

Cas locks eyes with him. That fire. You were Mount Vesuvius, Dean thinks out of the blue. You were ash covering the sky; an ice age. I can see you, covering Europe in snow. I see you making famine.

“I’ve never been conscious of it before,” Cas says carefully. “There has always been an empty space. The ending has never been foretold. But I never—”

He inhales sharply, and pulls away from Dean’s grasp. “You ruined me. Time— I must have always been conscious like this, but this is a change, but that doesn’t— I am not in— I am not like you.”

“Jesus, Cas, let’s— chill out for a sec—”

“I should not be inside time the way you are,” Cas bites out, violently. And then he pauses, and looks at Dean.

Thoughtfully, he adds, “And yet. Here we are.”

“Yeah, okay, I don’t—” Dean rolls his left shoulder back. All he knows is that Cas said you ruined me, and Dean can understand that much. Maybe he can fix it. He asks, “That’s a good thing, right? That you don’t know? That means we can change it. We get to pick how our story ends.”

“You shouldn’t be able to see me like this,” Cas says abruptly. Under his skin, a hawk cries, echoing. “In this in between form.”

He looks restless. Dean tries, “S’okay, Cas, you’re not puttin' me off or anything.”

“We shouldn’t have had this conversation.” Cas blinks, and the earth slides, and Dean is in the driver’s seat of the Impala. He feels the bass of Cas’s voice under his thighs as he says, “Sleep well, Dean.”

The dream lingers. Dean senses glimpses of it: sand, the steering wheel, Pompeii. He has the sneaking suspicion that Cas might’ve been involved, but he has no evidence, no reminder to check on Sam’s location, no ripped up sheet of paper in his pocket.

He rolls over to check the time. An old Gideons sits under his phone, propped open to Daniel, of all things. Dean thought they were at the end of the book. But there is a God in heaven that revealeth secrets, and maketh known to the king Nebuchadnezzar what shall be in the latter days. Thy dream, and the visions of thy head upon thy bed, are these.

“Bullshit,” Dean snorts, tossing the Bible back into the drawer. He thinks about praying to Cas. Hey Cas, he’d say, you up there? Got kind of a wacky feeling about all this. Wackier than our usual, even.

Ridiculous. He throws his coat on, and kicks Sam outta bed, mostly just thankful the kid’s where he’s supposed to be. He waits for him in the car, tapping his fingers against the steering wheel. It’s quiet, but he doesn’t really wanna put on any music. As if there’s something else he should be listening for.

“Well,” he says to himself when he can’t remember it. Sam comes out of the room with their bags, and he turns the key in the ignition. The engine’s rumble is familiar under his thighs. “It’ll come to me.”

#agoodsoldier fic #grocerystoredean #:)#dean #castiel

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soupy-sales2004 · 3 years ago

Text

Bowie Bible links to...

TIN MACHINE I (1989)~

Heaven's in Here

"...one of the first Tin Machine songs worked on, prior to the band’s existence. Bowie and Gabrels wrote and demoed a number of songs in Montreux, at a time when the project was considered to be a solo Bowie one."

Tin Machine

"...a fin de siècle screed that rants against the decadence of modern society. A succession of grim characters – “goons with muddy hair”, “the guy that beats his baby up”, “Working horrors-humping Tories” – parade past as Bowie sings of wanting to escape “this psycho time bomb planet”, being “grey and blown to hell” and, to contrast the solitude of ‘Sound And Vision’, “Raging raging raging/Burning in my room”.

Prisoner of Love

"The fact that my girlfriend is young, very naive and kind of straight is, for me, something I just would like her to retain for as long as she can. ’Cause there is so much crap out there, you know, and there’s nothing wrong with being like that. That’s why it’s got a very kind of corny ‘Just stay square’ line in it." [Bowie]

Crack City

"Built around a driving two-chord loop, Tin Machine’s offering was among the less subtle of the genre, with Bowie taking aim at dealers and users with an earnest yet crudely expletive-laden screed." [Bowie] "'I don’t wanna go on preaching but I’ve only heard a couple of anti-drug songs. Frankly, I don’t think many people are writing them, but I’ve not heard one that’s effective because they’re all intellectual, they’re all literate, and they’re written for other writers.'"

I Can't Read

"'I Can’t Read’ was worked up there. It’s one of my favourite songs from that record. It’s very reflective, but is really the sound of us, the chemistry of those players together, making something spontaneous. It might’ve been written before, but it was the first time it had been played by the band. And we did it literally minutes after a massive tropical downpour in the evening, when we’d all been off to look at these frogs. It was definitely an electric atmosphere when we did it." [Armstrong]

Under the God

"David and I had about five song ideas sketched out initially – ‘Heaven’s In Here’ and ‘Pretty Thing’ and a version of ‘Under The God’ that was called ‘Night Train’ at one point. We even kept some of the ‘Night Train’ backing vocals as a tip of the hat to James Brown, with a Sonny Boy Williamson guitar riff." [Gabrels]

Amazing

"A straightforward love song, ‘Amazing’ contains some of David Bowie’s clearest expressions of devotion: 'Since I found you my life’s amazing' is the core message, but there is also a hint of jealousy and possessiveness. 'I’m scared you’ll meet someone/In whom you’ll confide,' he sings, and later: 'My nightmare, rooted here watching you go'."

Working Class Hero

"That’s always been a really favourite song of mine. I like that first John Lennon album a hell of a lot. I think all the songs are really beautifully written and, again, very straight from the shoulder. There’s an honestly in the lyrics there. And that particular song, I thought, would sound great as a rock song. It seemed very worth doing."

Bus Stop

The song’s lyrics, a brief vignette about a man who finds Jesus at a bus stop, brought a moment of levity to the often dour Tin Machine album. The pen portrait of city life brought to mind some of Bowie’s earliest songwriting styles, although in 1967 he never managed lines like “I’m not saying that I don’t believe you/But are you sure that it really was him?/I’ve been told that it could’ve been blue cheese/Or the meal that we ate down the road”.

Pretty Thing

Although inevitably bringing to mind the 1960s beat group The Pretty Things and Bowie’s own ‘Oh! You Pretty Things’, Tin Machine’s song is one of their less inspired moments, a leaden rock-out with bluntly sexist lyrics. As an example of Tin Machine at their laddish worst, and how Bowie dumbed down his lyrics at the turn of the Nineties, it’s hard to beat.

Video Crime

"Horror films and video games were among the social menaces warned against by sections of the media in the late Eighties. In 1988 the film Child’s Play was accused of inciting violence among children, and games such as Leisure Suit Larry and Splatterhouse were criticised in some quarters for adult content including lewdness, violence, gore, and obscenities."

Run

While on the surface a love song, ‘Run’ has a far darker heart. It is a song of desperation and addiction, of people being held back by their vices. 'I’m a Goldman, I’m a soaring tower/And it’s cold in here without your love,' Bowie sings. 'Trouble in here, trouble out there/Mainline problems ’til you no longer care'."

Sacrifice Yourself

"Although written by David Bowie and the Sales brothers, the star of ‘Sacrifice Yourself’ is arguably lead guitarist Reeves Gabrels, whose layered and intricate lines are delivered at speed, rarely letting up for the song’s entirety. Bowie’s lyrics, meanwhile, appear to be semi-autobiographical, referencing 'a Klingon who could cream him in the press" and, in the final verse, cocaine and ‘Suffragette City’ ('Wham bam, thank you Charlie')."

Baby Can Dance

When it came to the guitar parts, we thought about them in terms of architecture – Gothic spirals of sound. This is where the art-school background really helps, because we rarely speak in musical terms." [Gabrels]

#tin machine #david bowie #bowie bible #sources #facts #song facts #list #old goal: find *one* volare heavens in here #all text cited from bb #tin II later

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crescentmoons-and-stardust · 3 years ago

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The Broken Hearts Hotel

Chapter One: Star-Crossed

I’ve had many names over the years. I don’t even remember my original name so I’ll use the most popular one. The one everyone recognizes.

Juliet is my name and fair Verona is where I’m from (in this version, at least). My age is disputable but I remember I was young. Too young for what I experienced. It blows my mind that some can even consider my tale a romance when I think about it. My life was cushy, I’ll admit. My family was rich and influential. I didn’t want for anything growing up. Looking back I realize I had the perfect life but hindsight is twenty twenty.

Maybe that’s why I did what I did though. I was a spoiled, bored teenager. I needed excitement in my life.

Rosalina was considered the beauty of the family. She was a few years older than me and was totally stuck up. Always surrounded by a group of friends, my older cousin had no time for little ole me. Actually, no one really had time for me. My other cousin Tybalt had an older brother protectiveness of me but other than that he left me alone. My dearest (and truthfully, only) friend was my nurse. For the record, her name was Bianca. That’s usually left out.

Bianca was my friend and surrogate mother since my own couldn’t bother herself with parenting. Bianca was old fashioned. We’d spend our time doing needlepoint and reading the bible. Like I said, I was a bored teenager.

So when I was finally allowed to attend one of our grand masquerade parties, I was thrilled. Bianca sewed me a gorgeous dress, though the neckline was a little too modest for my taste. I spent hours at the market trying to find the perfect mask. I finally decided on a dainty red and gold mask lined with pearls. I was going all out for my first masquerade.

I could barely sleep the night beforehand. I was so excited. I had my hair done and was dressed hours before the party started. I’m not going to lie, when I looked in the mirror, I was blown away by how I looked. I finally looked like a woman, and a beautiful one at that.

The party was both amazing and overwhelming. There were so many people that I had to greet and so many men to dance with. But one man in particular caught my eye.

So I should probably back up here and talk about the rivalry that has plagued my story for centuries. Montagues and Capults have hated each other since God knows when. It goes back years, maybe even decades. What was the issue? No one knows. Isn’t it ironic? Isn’t it poetic?

Let’s be real, it’s stupid. And I’m sure the original reason for the hatred between my family and his was stupid as well. The rivalry was well known throughout the town. I can only assume everyone else rolled their eyes when it was brought up.

Anyway, back to the party. Romeo caught my eye from across the room. Was it love at first sight? I thought so but what did I know? I’d never been in love before. But there he was looking as handsome as a prince. And he was staring at me in much the same way. I blushed and broke eye contact first. Suddenly I was filled with panic and I slipped out into the garden. He followed me a moment after.

“My lady,” He bowed to me. Actually bowed. How could I resist that? “My name is Romeo.”

“Nice to meet you Romeo,” I murmured. I was going for demure but it came out as a squeak. He took my hand and kissed it in greeting. I could have melted into a puddle on the floor. Embarrassing, I know, but this was the first man to interact with me outside of family. I didn’t know at the time that he had originally been there for Rosalina. Or that he fell in love with a different girl each week, I just knew that there was a handsome man before me. Me. Boring, good mannered, Juliet.

Well it wasn’t long before we were in the garden kissing until my lips went numb. Unfortunately my absence was noted and Tybalt came searching for me. Not only did he ruin my first kiss but he made such a scene that Romeo was soon kicked out of the party.

I was sent to my room at once where I wallowed in despair. Would I ever see my beloved Romeo again? Well I didn’t have to wait for very long for my answer. Romeo scaled the wall and invited himself into my room and not long after, my bed.

It was wonderful and scary and thrilling all at once. The things he whispered in my ear, the lengths he promised to go for me. It’s no wonder I thought myself in love with him. And for that night, everything was perfect.

It all fell apart pretty quickly though. Romeo got a little too hot headed in the streets and killed my cousin. You think that would end any romantic feelings on my part but I was young and stupid. Tybalt started it anyway! He killed Romeo’s best friend first. Romeo was just a loyal friend. It was sweet, really.

That’s what I told myself. Not my proudest moment, I’ll admit. And then Romeo had to go into hiding. You see, they didn’t know it had been Romeo who killed Tybalt. The fight happened late at night and the only other witness, Mercruito, was already dead. So he left his body and fled to my bedroom to stash the murder weapon. He needed to leave town but he promised he’d come back. And I promised to wait. And I did. For months. He took an apprenticeship a few villages over while he waited for someone else to take the blame for Tybalt’s death. So I wrote him love letters that I never sent. I kept my window unlocked every night. I waited and prayed and yearned. And then I met Paris.

Paris was not nearly as handsome as Romeo but he was still an attractive man. While Romeo was flirtatious and suave, Paris was charming and gentle. He was a sweet man and if I hadn’t met Romeo, I think I would have been ecstatic when my mother announced our engagement.

We would have been happy together. I realize that now, but then all I thought of was my Romeo. I had a sweet spot for Paris and that only caused guilt when I remembered that I had already promised myself to another. Romeo was my true love. How could I ever think I’d be happy with another?

The timing of Romeo’s return couldn’t have been more perfect, almost as if he planned it like that. He had heard about the engagement. He raged and he sobbed as he asked if I was going to abandon him so easily. He’d die for me, he said. Would I be willing to do the same?

I would. And I did. With a special tonic I would fake my death and then Romeo would come get me from my family’s crypt. He’d whisk me away and we would start a new life together. I believed him and I think he believed himself as well. But it’s like I said earlier, Romeo was quick to fall in love.

So when the tonic was finally ready I drank it quickly before I could change my mind. My thoughts slowed and my vision blurred. I became sluggish and panicked as the tonic slowed my heart rate. I tried to make it to my bed but I think I may have lost consciousness before I could. I heard shouts as my world went black.

When I woke, my body ached. I was lying on a stone slab in a thin dress that did not keep out the cold. As my thoughts returned to me, I looked around and there was my Romeo waiting for me. I gave a weak smile that he did not return. Instead, he could not meet my eye and was fidgeting nervously.

“I think we’ve made a mistake,” He said at last. My thoughts were still confused so I did not respond.

“It was a fantasy to think we should run away together,” He continued.

“What are you saying?” I asked but I already knew. He was not going to start a new life with me.

“Perhaps you should marry Paris instead.” And then I knew. He had met someone else. He did not love me, he never did. This was all a game to him and it had finally gone too far.

“I gave up everything for you!” I cried. He shrugged and told me I wasn’t actually dead. I could return home to my family’s rejoice and it would be like nothing had changed. But things had changed. My heart was broken as the man who’d asked me to die for him had already moved on.

And suddenly I was angry. A burning white hatred bloomed inside me. I wanted him to suffer the way I had while he had been gone. How hopeless and sad I’d been. The happiness I’d felt when he returned was now being ripped away from me. I’d done all he had asked. I’d waited and was going to give up my entire life for him.

It was stupid to remind him of Tybalt. That I could tell everyone what he had done. I had the murder weapon after all, still rusted with my cousin’s blood. Romeo’s face paled as he tried to calm me. The more he tried, the angrier I became until we were both yelling.

I didn’t even see the knife he had until I felt it thrust up inside of me. He looked as shocked as I felt as we both realized what he had done. But then just as quickly, the shock vanished from his face as determined resolve replaced it. He stabbed me over and over again until my white dress was no longer white and the blood was pooling onto the floor. He laid me down gently, as gently as he had done when he shared my bed. He whispered sweet nothings in my ear that I tried not to hear. His tears that dripped down onto me only made me angrier and with my last strength I tried to push him away.

Blackness. Then light. Then the Broken Hearts Hotel.

My story, as twisted and retold as it has now become, is the greatest romantic tragedy of all time. And I couldn’t be any more furious about it.

#star crossed lovers #romeo and juliet #the broken hearts hotel #romeo and juliet aesthetic #juliet capulet #shakespeare #my post

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nerdygaymormon · 4 years ago

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(1/2) hi david! ok i have a quick thing abt women and the priesthood: its so frustrating to me, and it used to be 1/12 months we would study the priesthood and honestly they don't teach us anything really other than what kind of stuff they do (vaguely). i always try to bring up the talks about womens priesthood power (only if endowed lol) but they always get brushed off. when i said how unfair it was when i turned 12 that i couldn't get the priesthood my mom took me aside and talked to me about

(2/2) she said to think of it like a wheelchair for men, to help them to be able to do good and help others and give them motivation because if women had the priesthood they would want to help everyone (i cant even with that metaphor its so wrong) and honestly, why can't women hold the priesthood? has that ever been said? why? because we live in a man/father led society? im just really tired of all the barely hidden sexism in lessons + calling the guys 'the priesthood' i hate it so much. thanks!

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Yes, I remember those lessons. I thought for the young women and Relief Society the focus should be on how they can access the priesthood, why it matters there is priesthood and so on, not learning the young men can pass the sacrament (which btw, preparing or passing the sacrament doesn’t require the priesthood and we used to allow females to do this).

And how come the people in priesthood quorums didn’t need to spend a month learning about women’s contributions, or motherhood, or a way to provide some equity for women having to put up with learning of the men’s roles for a month

Yes, I’ve heard the excuse that men need priesthood in order to train them to be as good as the women naturally are. I don’t buy it. If priesthood service boosts a person’s goodness, why would we not want women to participate?

—————————

I feel like our Church doesn’t do a good job explaining it’s priesthood restrictions. That’s probably because there isn’t a good justification for them.

We had the disastrous ban of people of African descent not being eligible to hold the priesthood and also not allowed to receive temple blessings. Fortunately, in 1978 the temple blessings and allowing men of African descent to be part of the priesthood was restored. Now no one is banned based on race, ethnicity or national origin.

In early church history, the revelations mention men and the priesthood. I think that’s the basis for the current ban on women.

Was this absence of women intentional?

Could this be a case of the word “man” being used to mean “mankind” and wasn’t supposed to exclude women?

Maybe “men” is all the culture was able to accept at the time. Women didn’t have constitutional rights and weren’t allowed to vote, and were thought of as people who remain in the house while their husbands dealt with things in the broader world.

—————————

For a long time, our church taught that women can “receive all the blessings of the priesthood” even if they don’t hold it themselves.

Today, President Nelson has indicated that something unique happens in the LDS temple ceremony — something that imparts priesthood power to women. In the temple, there are certain ordinances that women perform for other women, which indicates they have the priesthood even though they haven’t been formally ordained to the priesthood.

Unfortunately, this isn’t very well defined.

Do women who’ve been through the endowment ceremony hold priesthood power, even though they aren’t ordained, and are only authorized to use this priesthood in the temple?

Could they be authorized to use this priesthood outside of the temple?

Why are they only authorized to use their priesthood for other women and not men?

Is this the Aaronic or Melchizedek priesthood, or is it some other branch of the priesthood?

—————————

I think it’s clear women can hold priesthood and wield its authority. There’s many examples from the Bible and early Church history.

Judges 4-5 - Deborah was a judge of Israel, acting as a prophet and military leader at a time when women were treated like property and valued by the number of children they could bear. She didn’t follow the gender role expected of her, and showed God is willing to have women as leaders, women as prophetesses. Perhaps patriarchy isn’t God’s will but a cultural trait of the ancient Israelites which we now read in the Bible and think is of God.

Acts 2:17 - “And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams”

Is priesthood required to prophesy?

Romans 16 - powerful scripture for equality and inclusion--so many names of women in positions of authority and influence listed. There’s not enough details to know the exact roles of the women. Is a “fellow servant” an apostle? Is a woman who travels & teaches as Paul does, an apostle? What about the women who are leaders together with their husband? Some women sound like heads of the congregation, are they equivalent to bishops and pastors?

There’s an address from Joseph Smith to the Relief Society on March 30, 1842 that many believe indicates he intended for women to hold the priesthood. “the Society should move according to the ancient Priesthood, hence there should be a select Society separate from all the evils of the world, choice, virtuou[s] and holy— Said he was going to make of this Society a kingdom of priests an in Enoch’s day— as in Paul’s day”

Healing by the laying on of hands was a practice that was common for Mormon women in the 19th century, although it was said to be done by faith, not priesthood. There’s even a famous example of Mary Fielding Smith blessing an ox to health on the trek west to Utah. This practice was stopped because it was too similar to the priesthood.

—————————

What our church has allowed women to do has varied, and needing priesthood authority was often the excuse for why women couldn’t do these things.

Women were barred from praying in Sacrament meeting from 1967 until 1978.

In 1984, a woman spoke in general conference for the first time since 1930. Since then, women have spoken in every general conference.

Women were once permitted to join in or stand as an observer at the blessing of her baby, but today it’s priesthood only

In 2013, the first time a woman prays at General Conference.

In 2013, the "sister training leader" position is created, a leadership position for women who are missionaries.

In 2015, the church appointed women to its executive councils for the first time.

2021, positions for women were created at the Area level of leadership in Europe, they’ll participate in leadership councils, and train Relief Society, Young Women and Primary Leaders.

—————————

Can women hold the priesthood? I think the evidence points to yes. I believe we’re in the same situation as the priesthood ban of Black men where it’s now our tradition and belief and will take a revelation to undo. The question is, are the apostles and prophet seeking such a revelation?

If we extended the priesthood to all worthy members regardless of gender, that would solve several issues. For example, we have areas with many more women as active members, and the men in those congregations must shoulder several callings that require the priesthood. Their burden would be much lighter if women could share in the responsibilities

The disparity that women see in their everyday lives would be eliminated. They may be in a position of authority at work, but then on Sundays, for the most part they’re limited to working with women & children, and excluded from top leadership positions. I wrote a thing where I switched gender roles at church and I think it makes clear the messages we are sending to our members, particularly our impressionable children and teensagers.

Then there’s the case of trans & intersex people. Is priesthood for men given according to their spirit or to their body? How do we know what gender is the spirit of an intersex person? If everyone were eligible for the priesthood, it would save us from having to answer what is perhaps an unanswerable question about whether the body & spirit of trans people got mismatched.

—————————

We currently are not accessing the talents and capabilities of 1/2 the population. You’d think a church that has Heavenly Mother as part of its theology would be anxious to recognize the contributions that women can make and let them have leadership roles at all levels of the Church.

#long post

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imaginesbymk · 4 years ago

Text

“There is no Goodbye.”

The Pacific One Shot

Summary: Nothing is more ironic than Eugene breaking up with you just for the sake of sparing you the heartbreak if he were to die at war. But when he’s lucky to return home to Mobile, his first mission is to find you. Will Eugene be able to win you back before someone else does?

Pairing: Eugene Sledge x Fem!Reader

Non Requested

Tags: angst/breakup, swearing, smoking, drinking, mentions of an ethnic slur + mentions of war violence

Word Count: 3,016

Author’s Note: song inspiration for this oneshot is wait by m83!!! i totally recommend this song cos its so beautiful!! pls give this a like/reblog and maybe some feedback!! <333

YOU were sick of crying in your pillow every night. You were aware of how puffy your eyes must have been by now, you acknowledged your friends who called and visited, checking on you, but not even that helped soothe the heartache in you. His name just kept echoing in your mind and replayed, finding their way into your sleep. You wished you hated Eugene Sledge, but deep down in your heart- you just couldn’t.

Three knocks came on your bedroom door. “Y/n, your food’s getting cold,” you heard your mother from the other side.

“I’m not hungry.” You couldn’t remember the amount of times you’ve used that as an excuse to stay where you were, depressed and heartbroken.

Eugene broke up with you on a Sunday night. You two were dressed for the occasion; a dinner party was held at a grand convention center that was known and popular by several Alabamians. You wore the necklace Eugene got you as a gift, and you loved showing it off. In fact, you wore it every day to remind yourself, your family and your friends that Eugene Sledge was the love of your life.

Later you noticed how strange he was acting the whole dinner, how quiet and tense he got so suddenly. His hand would slip away whenever you held it while walking, or when they were held under the table. It was like he was trying to hold something back, like a cat catching his tongue. Then, you found him outside, leaning against the stairway.

“What is it, Eugene?”

He paused every time he looked at you, how it pained him to say what he needed to say. Whether it was now or never, he leaves for the train in a couple of days.

“Wait a minute, Eugene,” You remembered your body turning cold as ice, but not from the night breeze. “Are you breaking up with me?”

Oh how you wished he was kidding, but the look on his face read that he wasn’t in the slightest. He was joining the marines corps, despite his heart murmur and his father and brother encouraging him to go to college instead. He flunked out of his classes on purpose just to enlist, and since only God knows what fate lies ahead, he felt it was best to put a stop to the relationship.

It wasn’t your right to be angry about his choices sometimes. He was in his twenties now, old enough to make up his mind. He was fighting for everyone’s freedom, after all, which is probably the bravest thing Eugene is doing. However, you didn’t understand why. Eugene was a believer, he believed in God and miracles. He asked God to send him a miracle through prayer in his own time, and they were answered in the form of you. So why couldn’t he believe in the stable relationship you both can still have even when he’s off to fight?

As expected, you didn’t take it too well. Right there, you broke down in front of him. Eugene walked over and reached his hand out to touch your shoulder, but you shoved him away.

“I’m sorry,” he said softly. You angrily ripped the necklace off of you and threw it at him before running off in tears. He never chased after you.

You dared not to go back inside the dining hall where your family and friends were, as well as his, so you walked home by yourself without waiting for anyone to catch up with you. He was going mad, you bet. Enlisting in the marines was one thing, but calling it quits on your relationship?

That was the last time you saw Eugene. He didn’t wait to see if you would turn up at the train station, begging him to have a change of heart. He never saw you there, and he boarded the train to California.

What were you more upset about: the love of your life dumping you, or the chances of the love of your life dying?

THE year was now 1945, and Eugene sat in the passenger seat in Sid’s mobile when he picked him up from the station.

The Japanese surrendered, and the boys back at the islands held a celebration with drinking, bonfires and loud music. Eugene, Snafu and Burgin sat on the rocks, watching the night sky, contemplating their return to home.

Victory Day was now nighttime, Eugene blew out smoke from his pipe, counting the stars. His tiny bible that was pocketed in his dungarees was pulled out, using the distant lit fires as a light to read through the tallied marks from the book of Genesis to Thessalonians, then out came a piece of paper that fell onto his lap.

He picked it up and unfolded it, taking another puff from his pipe. Eugene reads the first two words.

Dear y/n

The letter was never delivered to you because it was a letter Eugene had never sent, in fact it was never finished. He never got his first sentence down as they were ordered to get their gear ready to move down Okinawa. He never wrote a letter to you at all for the rest of his time serving, because he knew he wouldn’t be receiving one back.

Snafu slapped him awake one night and told him to shut up because he kept saying your name in his sleep. Eugene sounded desperate and panicked when he said it, too, and if the volume increased, it would have given away their spot. The marine was lucky it was a slap in the face rather than a bullet to the skull.

The next day, Snafu asked Eugene for two things: a light, and who “y/n” was.

“She was my girl,” Eugene handed a lighter to Snafu to light his cigarette.

“Was.”

“I couldn’t stand the thought of leaving her at home just for a man in uniform to come to her door to tell her I’ve been KIA.”

“Shit, so you dumped her?” Snafu grins. “Should of given her to me, Sledgehammer.”

Eugene didn’t laugh. It was an inappropriate joke, no surprise coming from Snafu himself. He sat in the filth in silence, his bloodied and dirty hands holding your gold necklace that you threw at him. He brought it with him to war, and kept it as a bookmark in his Bible.

Eugene’s home was the same as he had left it, he knew that when Sid pulled up at the long pathway at the gates. Georgia cottage was indeed a sight, and Eugene loved it so much as a child. It was spacious with nature and trees to walk his dog, a forest down the road to go hunting and fishing with his father, a meadow where he would take you on a warm day.

Sid sat in the parked car for a few moments, Eugene hadn't started walking to the front door just yet. “I visited her,” Sid broke the silence. “Just like I promised.”

Eugene had to ask, “How is she?”

“I was starting to think she had forgotten about you... that was until I showed up at her door,” he replies. “It was tense, but she’s doing all right.”

Eugene nods, smiling a bit. He trusted his best friend to check up on you for him. At least you were doing fine, according to Sid’s words. "No crying?”

“She don’t cry no more. I introduced her to Mary Houston and invited her to my wedding- if that’s alright with you.”

He chuckled, making a face. “Why would I not be? It’s your wedding, you greaser.”

“Well one, and you should probably take my word for it, Y/N still hates your guts,” he said. “And two, whether or not she speaks to you at all on my wedding day, at least I’ll have you there as my best man.” Sid noticed the look on his best friend’s face. “There’s the O.O.M ball coming up. Y/n’s gonna be there.”

He smiles at him. “See you later?”

“Welcome home, Eugene.” And he drives off, prompting Eugene to reunite with his parents.

[x]

SHOWING up to the O.O.M ball immediately made you feel bummed. You showed up without a date. You shouldn’t have the right to feel bummed, anyway. You turned down any guy that had asked you. You could have said yes, but something in your heart was telling you no, and you couldn’t figure out what it was.

Sighing, you suddenly didn’t feel like going to the bar for a second drink, and you just didn’t like waiting until your friends weren’t with their dates to go up to talk to them, so you found yourself heading outside to the front. It’s not like you could escape the guests, as tables and chairs were set outside occupied with more people, and even more people standing around and chatting with their friends.

You leaned over a tree where you felt like no one could see you for approach, being able to hear the loud music from the inside. But for what? You could just leave and say you felt sick. What were you waiting for?

Several years had gone by since he left, and nothing about you has changed. Your hair grew a bit after a slight trim, and so has your wardrobe. Your dress was pretty expensive, and no one complimented it. You just needed someone to come up to you and say-

“You look beautiful.”

You spun around, knowing that Southern accent all too well. Not a lot of alcohol was consumed, so asking yourself if you drank too much that you started to see and hear things was out of the question. How did he know where to find you? How was he able to sneak up on you like how he used to as a surprise? He’d always do that, then pick you up and spin you around with joy. But this time, he stood in front of you, gazing at you like a painting.

Your vision started blurring.

“Y/n?” he thought you were having a stroke in front of him, and he reached out his hand. “Y/n?”

“Gimme a minute.” You breathed heavily, gripping the tree for support. Maybe you were about to faint in shock. After picking up your senses, you were able to respond. “Eugene,” you said softly. “You’re here.”

He nodded. “In the flesh.” You really couldn’t believe it. Maybe you were seeing and hearing things. But he was here. Eugene Sledge was really here, standing before you, and not a scratch on his face. His hair was fixed, too, and you could tell he was now in greater shape.

“How was...” you felt like you shouldn’t ask for so many reasons. “I mean, you made it. You’re home.”

“At last,” he answered, placing his wooden pipe in his mouth. “What are you doing all the way over here? Your date’s probably searching all of Mobile for you.”

“I don’t have a date,” you shook your head. “I mean, I came alone. I didn’t bring anyone.”

“You too?” he blew out smoke.

“Yeah. Um-” all it took was for you to breath in and crunch your nose from the awful stench of nicotine that everyone was so used to. “Since when did you start smoking?”

He shrugged. “Since I killed my first Jap. Helps me calm down.”

"Well... I’m talking to you and you’re blowing smoke right in my face.”

Eugene nodded, taking the pipe out. “Sorry. How have you been?”

“Good.”

Eugene furrowed his brows. “That’s it? Just good?”

“I mean, what else would you expect me to say?”

“You’ve completed your education, you’re engaged, you and your partner are buying a house?”

“Jesus, Eugene. It’s way too early for that. I can’t even drive.”

“I’m kidding. I can only assume you’re in complete shock. I can’t say I’m not surprised,” Eugene says. “I can also assume you hated me as soon as you threw the necklace I gave you right at me.”

“And I still hate you.”

He looks at you, scoffing. “Is that right?”

“Yes,” you folded your arms. “You dump me and leave to join the marine corps, I wrote you a letter on your birthday and you never wrote back, every time I see your parents at the market they look at me like I’m the face of death. You shouldn’t have come here, I was doing just fine.”

“Really?” Eugene raised his eyebrows. The nonsense coming out that mouth. If only Eugene could kiss them shut. "All right. Heard you spoke with Sid.”

“Yeah, and? He invited me to his wedding."

“And he asked me to be his best man. So you might as well hold in your punch until the wedding is over.”

Your blood started to boil. Maybe you haven’t changed, but the war did indeed change the hell out of him. This attitude he carried wasn’t impressing you one bit. “What the hell’s your problem?”

“My problem? I’m trying to have a conversation with you, y/n.”

“And you’re acting as if I’m the reason you dumped me.”

“I had my reasons,” he spoke back,

“Damn you, Eugene Sledge!” you slapped him repeatedly on his chest and shoulder. “Damn you for hurting me like that! Damn you for not writing to me! Damn you for leaving me!”

You cried out, as he simply stared and did his best to restrain your arms away from hitting him once more.

He never spoke a word until you calmed down. Then, you realized... “Oh God, Eugene. I’m so sorry,” you gasp. “I would never lay a hand on you.”

“A Jap tried to kill me with a bayonet,” Eugene said. “I kinda had that slap coming.”

You let a tear fall down your cheek, and you looked down so Eugene wouldn’t be able to notice, but he was smart enough to know. “Baby... it’s okay. I’m here now.” He pulled you close and held you. You haven’t felt his touch since that night. You were overcome with the nostalgia during the happy times, and even the sad times. He would hold you like you were gonna slip right out of his hands.

“I’ve missed you so much, y/n. There hasn’t been a night where I haven’t dreamt about you, where I would die, or where I would watch you marry a man who doesn’t know you the way I do.”

“Eugene... you broke my heart and just stomped on it like mud.”

“And you had every right to be hurt, but that was never my intention, I just did what I thought was the right thing.” He played with the curls in your hair and kissed you softly on your temple.

It wasn’t like it was a last minute decision. Regardless his heart murmur was there or not, he wasn’t going to stay home and attend classes. Breaking up with you wasn’t last minute, either.

“I guess I should have been more understanding,” you admit, leaning back against the tree.

“I spent nights trying to come up with what I was going to say, and when I was planning on saying it. I used to worry about the murmur, if I’d remember to feed Deacon, or telling my Mother about my plans for the future.”

“You weren’t sure about any of those things, Gene.”

“Seeing your face that night made me realize I’m never going to love anyone else the way I love you,” Eugene shook his head slowly. “I was definitely sure about that.”

“Loved,” you correct him.

“No, y/n. Love. I still love you, more than the stars reach the apex of this goddamn universe. I don’t think I’m ever gonna stop loving you. You’re really the answer God has given me after endless nights of praying for something good.”

“Then why didn’t you write me?”

“I had to find a way to move on. If it distracted me from fighting, I would have been as good as dead. Something in me died from the war, but the feelings I have for you are still here.”

You couldn’t help but smile a bit. “I love you more, Eugene.”

“So I hope it’s not too late to ask this,” Eugene said. “Miss Y/N Y/L/N, are you seeing anyone?”

You shook your head.

He raised his brows. “So for nearly four years, you haven’t been seeing anyone? Not one fella?”

“I tried to. I mean, I kept thinking you slept with a nurse.”

“Women weren’t even in my corner of the pacific, and nurses were there to do their jobs. Besides,” Eugene smiled. “I’d rather come home to the most beautiful girl I’ve ever known in Mobile.”

“Mary Houston?”

Eugene laughs. “I was talking about you. At least you’re humble.” He laughed harder when you started playfully slapping him on the chest repeatedly again. “Hey! But there’s no one I’d rather be with. I’m willing to start over, maybe pick up where we left off.”

“I would love that.”

Eugene reached in his tux pocket, pulling out the golden necklace you loved wearing. “I believe this belongs to you.” He walked behind you, and began wrapping the necklace around your neck, clipping the lock together in place. “Y’know, after throwing it right at my face?”

“Sorry,” you blushed. “Don’t ever do that again; saying goodbye.”

“There is no goodbye.” He turned your head to face him using his finger under your chin. “There never was, just the old hello.”

You smiled again.

“I’m gonna kiss you now.” He pulls you close to him. “Is that all right?”

“You can kiss me whenever you feel like it, Gene.” And you wouldn’t mind it one bit.

“Yes, ma’am.” And he leans in, kissing you almost a dozen times now, the overcoming nostalgia of the good time hitting once more. “And once I’m done kissing the daylights outta you, I’m bringing you inside. It’s been a while since I’ve danced with the love of my life.”

the end

#eugene sledge one shot #eugene sledge imagine #eugene sledge x reader #eugene sledge #the pacific one shot #the pacific imagine #the pacific x reader #the pacific #reader insert #one shot #imagine #joe mazzello #eugene sledge fic #eugene sledge fanfic #mk's faves

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starring-movies · 4 years ago

Text

The Haunting of Bly Manor: Episode Analysis

*SPOILERS*

Episode 2 - The Pupil

Episode 2 of The Haunting of Bly Manor is split into two halves, with the first being 6 months earlier and focusing on how and why Miles got sent home from boarding school; and the second half continuing with the present-day storyline at the manor.

A teacher at Miles’ school, Father Stack, who takes a particular interest in helping Miles, reads a bible excerpt from Mark 5:11 in one of the lessons. He reads “now, there on the hillside a great herd of swine were feeding. And the unclean spirits begged him, ‘send us into the swine, let us enter them’. So, he gave them permission, and the unclean spirits came out and entered the swine. And the herd, numbering about two thousand, rushed down the steep bank into the sea, and were drowned in the lake”. The excerpt is important to Miles in regard to the rules for Peter and Rebecca taking over his and Flora’s bodies. According to this bible story, Miles is told that Peter and Rebecca cannot survive in his and Flora’s bodies without them being pushed out, unless Miles and Flora give “permission” for them to enter their bodies.

It’s a notable difference that the original bible excerpt says that they were drowned in the “sea”, not the “lake”. This alteration brings our attention the story, as it makes it more akin to Miles and Flora’s situation. It also brings it to Miles’ own attention that Peter and Rebecca taking over their bodies permanently will “drown” them, because they will never be able to take over their own bodies again. However, it also gives Miles hope that even the “demons” can’t take away man’s god given free will; and so Peter and Rebecca can’t take possession of their bodies permanently, without them being given the opportunity to use their own choice to grant them that permission.

Father Stack also calls the “unclean spirits”, which are parallel to Peter and Rebecca, “demons” when he is paraphrasing the story. The choice to change the word that’s used reflects Peter’s malicious intent of taking over Miles’ body.

On the blackboard behind Father Stack, we can also see that there is a number of other bible verses which the pupils are reading in class. We can see written on the blackboard is; Mark 5:1-20, Gerasene Demonica, Matthew 8:28-34, Luke 8:26-37 and Healing Gerasene Demonica. All of the verses on the board are various narratives of the Exorcism of the Gerasene Demonica, which is the name of the story that Father Stack was reading.

Miles then receives a letter from Flora, through Father Stack. We don’t find out until later in the episode that Flora’s letter says “come home”, and has a drawing of her crying with a sad Rebecca and a happy Peter near her. The “come home” that’s written on the letter is a nod to The Haunting of Hill House, where Olivia wrote on the wall for Nell to “come home” to her. In both of these instances ‘coming home’ results in tragedy. For Nell it resulted in her death and if Dani hadn’t saved Miles and Flora, then Peter and Miss Jessel would have succeeded in possessing their bodies.

We then see Miles climb up a tree and jump from it. An action which seems odd and sudden at first, but after we find out that Miles is actually trying to get home after receiving Flora’s letter, it makes much more sense. Miles had heard at the beginning of the day that a classmate was at home and not able to return because “he took a bit of a tumble”, so Miles is also trying to get sent home by taking a “bit of a tumble” himself. However, his plan doesn’t succeed and so he acts out in a number of increasingly troubling ways in order to get sent home.

That evening, Miles’ friend, Hooper, asks him why he jumped from the tree and Miles says that he was “just looking for the right key”. Looking for “the right key” turns out to be something that Miles learnt from Peter. In Episode 3, Peter told Miles that to impress a woman you have to find the right key for her, and for the majority of women their ‘key’ is flowers. So in this instance, Miles’ goal is not to impress a woman but to return home to Flora, and so he is trying to find “the right key” to make Father Stack give up on him and send him back home.

Miles’ third and final attempt to get himself sent home was to kill Father Stack’s bird, called Pidge, and he then shows no remorse when asked to apologise for the act. Miles does this because Father Stack told him previously that “it’s that feeling of remorse, that guilt... that’s what distinguishes us in God’s eyes” and that “none of us are blameless except... the animals”, and so he knows that the only way that Father Stack will send him home is if he does something unforgivable against an “innocents” and shows no “guilt” for doing so.

Back in the present day we see Hannah staring at a crack in the kitchen wall, which we go on to find out is actually a recurring vision of a crack in the well.’s wall. This crack in the wall of the well was the last thing that Hannah saw, after being pushed down the well, before she died.

As Owen, Hannah and Jamie sit and relax while Dani has the children weeding in the garden, they have a brief conversation. Jamie ‘tests the water’ and asks Owen his “thoughts on the new au pair” and says that she thinks that Dani is “maybe a bit too pretty”, continuing to ask him “do you think she’s pretty?”. Jamie is obviously interested in Dani but wants to dip her toe in the water before plunging in, to see if Owen will attempt to pursue Dani. But Owen says “don’t worry, I only have eyes for you, Hannah” - if Jamie knew that Owen, the only man in the manor, was interested in pursuing Dani then she knows that there would be no point in even attempting to pursue Dani herself. But through this probing she’s found out that she will have no competition from him, so she has a glimmer of hope that she might have a chance.

In this scene, Hannah also touches the back of her neck/head, which is something that she does repeatedly throughout the season. She constantly does this gesture because her neck was broken when she was pushed down the well; so she continually feels the pain in her neck, in the same way as she often sees cracks in the walls and gets stuck in memory loops.

Later, after the children and Dani have finished the gardening, Dani returns to her room to find that Flora has cleaned it and has found Eddie’s glasses amongst her belongings. Dani runs out of the house and has a panic attack, as this is probably the first time that she’s seen the glasses since Eddie’s mother gave them to her right before she left for Europe.

Jamie is on her way to fill in the crack in the kitchen wall, which Hannah asked her to do earlier, when she comes across Dani as she’s having her panic. Jamie handles it in the best way possible by trying to get Dani to laugh. It’s clear that her goal was to make Dani laugh as when Dani does eventually laugh, she smiles and says “there we are”. Jamie continues to try to calm Dani down and to help her feel normal and not be embarrassed (we can clearly see Dani is embarrassed and trying to hide her crying), as she tells her “I cry three, maybe four ties a day around here. Five, if I’m really being honest with myself”.

In return for helping to calm her down when she was having a panic attack, after finding that Miles (being possessed by Peter) has ruined Jamie’s roses, Dani tries to calm Jamie down. Although at first saying that they’re “just a few flowers”, after seeing how much Jamie cares about them, Dani instead is sympathetic and says “no, you’re right, I’ll talk to him”.

Just like Jamie did with Dani, Dani assesses the situation and adapts to fit the emotional need that was required of her at that moment - to calm Jamie down and make her feel seen. Dani shows compassion, empathy and understanding towards Jamie’s feelings, even though she might not understand why Jamie is upset herself.

When Dani is playing the game of hide and seek with Flora and Miles, Flora hides up in the attic. The attic is where the ghost of Perdita lives and that’s why the ghost can only hum along with Flora with a strained voice - Viola strangled Perdita, so her throat must have been extensively damaged and so she can only really wheeze.

Amusingly, after Miles (being possessed by Peter) tries to strangle Dani during the game of hide and seek, Dani says that the game is over, she runs back into the main part of the house and shouts “olly olly oxen free”. I’d never heard this term myself, but after looking it up, I found that it’s a phrase used to tell the players of a game that the sides have changed or that the game is over entirely. I found this amusing as it seems like a very feeble attempt to rein the children back in, after almost being strangled by one of them.

After seeing Peter through a window, we get the first example that what Dani said about herself in Episode 1, “I’m a lot braver than people think”, is definitely true. She doesn’t run and hide, despite being absolutely terrified of Peter, but she picks up a fire poker and runs outside, shouting “I’m going to call the fucking police”, to confront him herself.

At the end of the episode we get another example of Miles trying to protect Dani from the ghosts in the house. Miles knows that Peter is lurking around, as he’s just been possessing him, and so he tells Dani that he doesn’t “feel so good” and pretends to faint, so that Dani will come back inside and away from Peter.

You can read my previous The Haunting of Bly Manor posts here:-

Episode 1 - The Great Good Place

Episode 3 - The Two Faces, Part One

Episode 4 - The Way It Came

Episode 5 - The Altar of the Dead

Episode 6 - The Jolly Corner

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raz-b-rose · 4 years ago

Note

Hey so,, the Bible states that Eating burgers is a sin Women speaking in church is a sin Wearing blended fabric is a sin Eating SHRIMP is talked about more in the Bible as a sin than homisexuality is Women wearing pants is a sin Writing in your Bible or defacing it in any way is a sin Do some research on your own religion if you're going to preach it

Thank you for asking, I love this opportunity to help bring understanding to commands such as these. Thank you for your patience, lets get to it.

I can understand the overwhelming presence that is Gods word. Its a big book full of a lot of things that take a lot of cross referencing on occasion. After all, it is just one continuous story of God who was and is and always will be.

Warning, there's a lot.

Anyway there is a simple answer to all of those and it starts all the way back at Abraham. Some quick condensed history. God chose Abraham to establish the Hebrew/Jewish people. He faithfully followed Gods commands, and Isaac was born from his faithfulness and for Gods promise. A promise that Abraham’s offspring would cover the earth.

Isaac then had Esau and Jacob. Jacob then had 12 sons, Joseph the youngest was used to bring the Israelite people to Egypt. Where the Egyptians turned them into slaves.

Now enter Moses. God used this man to bring them out of Egypt and towards the promise land. This is where God starts to establish what would set his chosen people apart from the rest of the world. The old laws were there for their faithful obedience and for outsiders to know “thats an Israelite”.

The entirety of the OT speaks of Gods character, plans for salvation, and absolute authority. The laws are a reflection of that as well.

so now we have the group of laws God had Moses establish.

Now Jesus fulfilled the OT law.

Matthew 5:17-20 (Jesus speaking)

17 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. 18 For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. 19 Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least vin the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great vin the kingdom of heaven. 20 For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

Part of that fulfillment was the laws on food. Food was used to represent Holiness/ cleanliness. Everything about them had to be clean (their bodies, their homes, their sacrifices, etc.) Blemish free.

The Pharisees had twisted the laws to become legalistic and strict. An example would be here

Mark 7:14-23 (Jesus speaking)

14 And he called the people to him again and said to them, “Hear me, all of you, and understand: 15 There is nothing outside a person that by going into him can defile him, but the things that come out of a person are what defile him.”[e]17 And when he had entered the house and left the people, his disciples asked him about the parable. 18 And he said to them, “Then are you also without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile him, 19 since it enters not his heart but his stomach, and is expelled?”[f] (Thus he declared all foods clean.) 20 And he said, “What comes out of a person is what defiles him. 21 For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, 22 coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. 23 All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”

Food isn't what makes us unclean anymore, but rather the condition of our heart.

There is also a lot of debate over Acts 10:9-16

But I believe this passage has a double meaning. God is reminding Peter that he does not need to be legalistic to be “clean” anymore. Therefore the laws for food were fulfilled. This is reflected in his interpretation of the vision in verses 27-29.

Remember there was clean food and unclean food. Same for people. You weren't to associate with “unclean people”. Jesus fulfilled this law by opening the path to God to everyone, not just Jews. God gave the great commission to go out into all the world to everyone to preach the good news. This meant that anyone now had direct access to God, and the Jews no longer had to go through the extra steps to seek forgiveness. Salvation is within everyone's grasp, no matter what.

The command for blended fabric fits with these as well.

Deuteronomy 22:9-11

“You shall not sow your vine yard with two kinds of seed, lest the whole yield be forfeited, the crop that you have sown and the yield of the vineyard. You shall not plow with an ox and a donkey together. You shall not wear cloth of wool and linen mixed together.

By reading this we see the pattern that God is commanding that things that are different should be kept separate. Again we need context of the time.

Pagans in the area believed that by mixing things together they would achieve “magical” results. So God made this law to set them apart from them. He reaffirms this command, even going as far as to say not to let cattle bread with different cattle, in Leviticus 19:19.

In todays context, what sets us apart from others is our internal change that is projected outward. We become lights for God, and show Him through our change. Of course none of us are perfect, and if we aren't careful it can quickly become fake and legalistic.

We can wear blended fabric because Jesus fulfilled this law.

Next keeping with our fabric theme, clothing. This verse comes from Deuteronomy as well, so I will just put the link for both here.

Deuteronomy 22:5

“A woman shall not wear a man’s clothing, nor shall a man put on a woman’s clothing; for whoever does these things is utterly repulsive to the Lord your God.”

Some pretty strong language right there, but it's important to acknowledge why. We are sinners. God set very clear laws on what was and wasn't allowed. Remember that was to set His people apart, and to test their faithfulness.

Historically at the time men and women dressed very similarly. There were cultural ways used to discern between genders and that is what this verse is talking about here. Men did not wear pants when this law was written (at least not by the Jewish people) so why would it be a sin for women to wear pants today? It simply isn't. (Just because human men decided to use the bible to push their weird sexist agenda via mistranslation, does not mean this is what this verse intended.)

To apply it to a modern setting, it would be “why are you wearing what you are? How do you want people to perceive you? What is your heart behind wearing these clothes?”

So really this is another verse directly tied to transgendered identity sin, again a pagan tradition at the time.

ALL SIN is repulsive to the Lord. (The Hebrew word used in this verse is found all throughout the OT, with various uses.) Yes God established the laws, but He also established the sacrificial system for His people as well. He loved them, loved us, and gave them a way to atone for their sins and find forgiveness from God.

But the sacrifice of animals could only go so far. That is why Jesus came to be the final sacrifice. The Lamb of Salvation for us. He willingly gave His life for us, just as we can willingly continue to sin against Him, or willingly give our lives to Him.

Jesus fulfilled the laws and abolished the need for the sacrificial system.

OK this one has no verse in the bible that God commands us to not write in our bibles. None. Unless I’m just having trouble finding it, it's not a thing.

The sin is changing the words, as some translations do so you have to be very careful about which ones you use.

I got a book from the library years ago that was like a devotional for teen girls. In the book it had a verse from Psalms that sounded weird to me and when I compared the translation to my ESV, it had removed the part about God's faithfulness and love. Took it right out. That is a huge problem!

I know that translating the Hebrew and Greek to English is very difficult, especially given how the Greek had multiple words for love alone, and many other words. However, the languages are not so vastly different that you make changes like that without a prideful agenda. Good translations that I use, ESV, NASB, AMP for study purposes. As well as NKJV if you like a classic. I’m constantly comparing translations, and looking at original texts to get a feeling for what words were used.

I encourage you to note your bible. Mark what speaks to you, the blessings, the commands, the warnings. Every time God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit are mentioned, where verses intersect. Note everything.

For some of our brothers and sisters around the world they may only have a few pages to pass between each other, or are able to have His full word and treasure God's words dearly and keep everything they can close. They want to remember it all, and remember what they learn. And God wants that for us.

No writing in your bible is not a sin. Changing the words or removing them is a sin.

Ok now onto your “woman can’t speak in church” debate. 1 Corinthians 14. But because of everything I’m about to get into, this answer will be longer than the others. Feel free to stop here and come back. I know I’ve already written a lot.

First we need to look at the history of the city of Corinth, as when Paul wrote his letters, each one was tailored to the church in question and addressed their strengths and weaknesses.

The city of Corinth was a trade city set in a key location for sailors from all over the world. Its citizens were from all over the world, though mostly Roman, Greek, Jewish, and even a considerable amount of Italians. Because there was such a mix of cultures, there were a mix of religions.

The largest of these being the worship of the false goddess aphrodite. Sexual actions were common with her “temple” and prostitution was a rampant issue with the city. We have two sins of sexual nature and idol worship already. Within the church itself there were reports of incest, infighting, and drunkenness during services being reported as well.

Acts 10:1-23 is Paul's first visit to Corinth where he helped found the church. A family close to Paul and in the Corinthian church wrote to Paul with their concerns for how the church was conducting themselves. The 1 Corinthians letter (book) was written in response.

The church was a blend of Jews and Gentiles. So practices such as the aforementioned were common practice within the city and the Gentiles were at a loss for how to conduct themselves because these things were common during the worship of false gods.

Becoming Christ-like is a beautifully long process. It's not over night, no matter how much we wish it was. These people were still human and loved Christ but still knew very little about Him, and God the Father. (even some of the Jews had a lot of misconceptions they had to change)

So at the very beginning of his letter, Paul reminds them of their new identity. (1:1-9) and reaffirms their forgiveness through Gods grace and faithfulness to our salvation. Nothing we do after we accept His gift can revoke it. It is ours for all time for one time.

Woman and men were traditionally seated separately in synagogues so it makes sense that practice was still used in some new churches, such as that of the Corinthians, as they did have Jewish members.

He is calling out woman for calling to their husbands during sermons and being disruptive. Paul is asking that they save their question for after. He is also teaching woman new to these practices, gentiles, how to be respectfully in the church.

Paul encouraged woman to pray and praise in the church, chapter 11. So it would be contradictory for Paul to then turn around and say “woman can’t speak in church” in chapter 14.

To answer, yes woman can speak in church, but not teach to a body of men. Women can teach women, but women can’t teach men. God established a order of command.

God

Jesus

Men

Woman

Children

Following this upward, everyone is under authority of the role’s above them. That is how God designed the family unit, and in turn the church. The church is the body of Christ, and each of us have a purpose within his body for it function. Woman have a time and place to teach, and lead, but not to men.

I am only addressing the command pertaining to women at this time. I would love to do an in-depth look at all of 1 Corinthians, there is so much to it. Really, thank you for the opportunity to study these passages deeper, and teach them to you. I hope I did, I hope these make sense now.

I do need to add. When comparing these commands to the command of homosexuality, its important to remember the context. Homosexuality is a sin because it goes against Gods very direct design for mankind, how the family unit functions in direct relation to the church. These other ones however were established for a period of time to set the people apart from outsiders, and do not go against His intended purpose for creation. That is a very big difference.

Feel free to ask anything else, I loved doing this. I will try to get something for all of 1 Corinthians out, but I have a full life at the moment, so it will probably take awhile.

Praying and God bless

#Raz speaks out #Christianity #answers #christian #ot laws #nt commands #bible study #biblical history #comparing sins #big post #understanding the bible #culture

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derl30 · 4 years ago

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ALTERED STATES REVIEW TIME!

OK, this tumblr is, today, a vehicle for me to review ALTERED STATES. And you (the one person who stumbled on this review two-hundred years from n- oh who am I kidding, when the aliens from A.I. who show up to thaw out Haley Joel Osment and the teddy bear who was the real hero of that movie find this) should be very excited about this. Because this movie is insane. And highly entertaining.

Yes, the movie poster looks like ass. If I told you this was a movie where William Hurt (not the William Hurt from that awful 90's Lost in Space remake, or the one who slept through an entire performance as Duke Leto in the Syfy miniseries of Dune. This is before the body snatchers got him) took ayahuasca and got in a isolation tank and it blew his mind so hard he started devolving into a neanderthal and creating dimensional portals and he couldn't stop because he was addicted to finding the truth of existence... Well you wouldn't get that from this poster, would you? So let's move on. Shall we?

The film opens in 1967 with William Hurt's character, psychopathologist Edward Jessup, already immersed in a sensory deprivation tank, whilst his colleague and “buddy” Bob Balaban (he's just Bob Balaban in everything I'm not giving you his character's name look it up yourself if it's bugging you so much) oversees.

Now, you may notice I put buddy in quotes. The reason for that is that Jessup is a self-obsessed ass who seemingly has no reason to be around other people unless he can expound to them one of his various monologues. Bob Balaban barely gets a word in edgewise throughout the entire film. Bob Balaban.

See, Jessup loves the sensory deprivation tank experience. Unsurprisingly, as it allows him to be completely alone with himself for hours.

Later, at perhaps the lamest party ever, a bunch of faculty are chilling out and listening to the Doors. Everyone we see is talking about Jessup. Why? Well, much as Jessup is obsessed with himself, everyone else seems to follow suit by being obsessed with him. One young woman, Emily, (Blair Brown) is introduced to him in this very shot below as he arrives at the party:

Notice how is framed in holy light? There is a closeup after, of him framed in blinding glowing light followed up with a zoom in on Emily's face, enraptured with this incredible dynamic man. So much so that the moment he tries to make a goddamn sandwich she starts grabbing his celery (get your mind out of the gutter) and flirting with him. Which for these two that means talking science, immediately. Talking more at each other than with each other. This is often the way with Paddy Chayefsky's scripts.

PAUSE

Paddy Chayefsky is doubtless one of the great American writers for the screen. He wrote Marty, The Hospital and Network (which is a fucking incredible piece of work). He got an Oscar for all three. He also wrote this movie (Altered States, remember? Good lord) and disowned it completely three weeks in to production. His scripts tend to have very intelligent, driven characters at the center, who monologue extensively at each other. These scripts are not attempting to sound naturalistic.

Ken Russell, however, directed the film. He, like Chayefsky, is top notch at what he does (Direct. I said he directed the film like a second ago, come on keep up). His films, like Women in Love, The Devils, (which was banned in several major countries upon release and has never been shown publicly in its full, uncut form (by the way it's a masterpiece)) the Who's Tommy, Gothic, and Lair of the White Worm are all fucking gonzo nuts. I mean like, when you gave this guy the reins, you were going to Overthetopsville and there will be no stops on this trip. And god bless! I love directors who GO for it!

You're getting the chance to make a movie. Stop hemming and hawing and hit me over the head with what you want to say! Film is a visual medium, USE IT!

I feel I might have made my feelings clear here. So, moving on...

Ken Russell and Paddy Chayefsky immediately started butting heads, right from the start. Chayefsky was a BIG deal, and he wanted control over the picture in a BIG way. Ken would listen to his suggestions on everything to lighting and set dressing, and politely tell him, “No.”, and continue being the director of the film. Chayefsky hated him pretty quickly.

He had much more control over films like The Hospital. Which, if you watch The Hospital, well, it shows. You've got great actors (George C. Scott, Dame Diana Rigg (Dame may be the greatest official title of all time)) saying great dialogue. But its just two very witty bitter people sort of expounding on topics and speaking at each other and suddenly admitting they are in love and discussing what drapes they will have to buy for their new home. It's utterly preposterous, and it doesn't work in the way Sidney Lumet got it to work in Network, by literally making one of the lead characters realize his life is turning into a ludicrous soap opera.

So of course Ken tried to humanize, naturalize, the dialogue sequences. And it works! The film feels more human than the Hospital or Network. Despite the fact that Jessup is literally becoming more and more inhuman throughout the film. One of the ways he does this is by having the character's eat, drink, and work on other things during the dialogue sequences. This is perfectly normal in film, it's called giving the actor “business” to do, during the scene. Chayefsky HATED this. “They are mumbling my precious dialogue! Chewing through it! Sucking it through a straw!” Sorry, Chayefsky buddy. It works for the picture. Chayefsky also felt the actors were too emotional with his dialogue. Right. See, they call that acting.

UNPAUSE

Which brings us back to the first meeting of Emily and Jessup at the party. They are eating during this important scene! I can just picture Chayefsky seeing this, and running to the studio brass to tattle and get Ken Russell fired (as he got Arthur Penn of Bonnie and Clyde fame fired before Ken Russell came on board).

Emily and Jessup are, true to Chayefsky form, extremely intelligent, driven people and hearing them discuss topics such as anthropology and schizophrenia is quite interesting. It's just that what is to come, film being a visual medium, will eclipse just about any dialogue, no matter how good, from our mind thingys.

The two give up on the science talk and go straight to banging on her couch. After, she asks what he was thinking about. His answer is priceless. “God. Jesus. Crucifixions.”

She smiles.

Bwahahaha! Oh Paddy Chayefsky, you sure know women.

He admits he used to have religious visions. She listens to him from the sweaty couch whilst he sits naked on the floor, and starts going on about his father's horrible death of cancer and his loss of faith. And he admits to her that he's a nut. Her response is to call him a fascinating bastard. I think Lucas may have taken notes for Padme and Anakin.

So naturally, they get married immediately.

But none of that matters because Jessup gets back in the sensory deprivation tank and has his first vision. A nightmare of his dying father and lost faith in christianity. It's pretty great, filled with foreboding hospital rooms, his father's face being covered in a burning Shroud of Turin, everything covered by horrible blood red clouds and then THIS FUCKING THING SHOWS UP AND ITS ALIVE AND WRIGGLING

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!

excuse me...

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!

The many-eyed goat is slaughtered over a gold bible and suddenly Jessups screwing Emily again and we enter a blood vessel looking thing and the vision ends and he never mentions this again. Oh. Okay,

Emily continues on about what a nut Jessup is as they make marriage plans. Her monologue:

“You're an unmitigated madman. You don't have to tell me how weird you are. I know how weird you are. I'm the girl in your bed the past two months. Even sex is a mystical experience for you. You carry on like a flagellant... Which can be very nice, but I sometimes wonder if it's me that's being made love to. I feel like I'm being harpooned by some raging monk in the act of receiving God. (Emphasis mine)

"And you are a Faust-freak Eddie! You'd sell your soul to find the great truth. Well, human life doesn't have great truths. We're born in doubt. We spend our lives persuading ourselves we're alive. And one way we do that is we love each other, like I love you. I can't imagine living without you. So let's get married, and if it turns out to be a disaster, it'll be a disaster.”

It's a disaster.

As in, by the next scene. It starts off happy enough looking, they have kids and people are smiling. And hey, wow it's seven years later! But, well, see, whoops, they are getting a divorce. Well, not they. See, he is divorcing her because he considers the seven years with her a complete waste.

She still loves him, desperately. He doesn't give a shit about her or the kids. He tells Bob Balaban this, straight up. And then starts bugging him about deprivation tanks and Hinchi Indians in South America who have sacred mushrooms that can really fuck you up.

It's at this point you would like for Jessup to be hit by a Mack truck. But the movie continues on. By the way, this is one of the kids he doesn't give a crap about:

That's right. Drew Barrymore's first role is a kid that William Hurt doesn't give a shit about. Something that William Hurt would make a career out of with narcoleptic performances in Lost in Space and Syfy's Dune. So, Emily takes the kids to Africa for her anthropology work while Jessup goes to South America to go deeper into his own creepy mind.

The Hinchi Indians agree to allow him to participate in the drug ritual. They enter their holy cave.

This shot is beautiful. At this point the film becomes increasingly gorgeous. Ken Russell has started to go into overdrive, ladies and gentlemen. Buckle. Your. Seatbelts.

The Indians grab Jessup's hand and cut him, freaking him out. They pour his blood into the drug mixture. They begin to drink. Then he takes a sip. The intensity of the film here has quadrupled. The vision begins, fireworks going off all around him. He sees cave paintings of humans and komodo dragons and this:

The proper life he left behind with Emily. He's convulsing, sweating. The Indians are all around, masked. Snakes. He's laughing in pain. Energy spills from the void. A snake under the parasol strikes and begins to strangle him. He and Emily march toward a nuclear explosion as energy pours from the cut on his hand, becoming a lizard. From within a sandstorm, Emily watches him, naked. Jessup looks at her, entranced, as the soothing sands cover them both, slowly.

It's a beautiful sequence. A perfect film sequence. I can't overstate how strong the vision sequences are from this point forward. Great visual effects work and the madman mind of Ken Russell create something unforgettable, with it's own pace, independent from the rest of the film.

Jessup awakens with a komodo dragon laying before him, ripped to pieces. The Indians and the others all claim he killed it in rage. Jessup remembers nothing, takes samples of the drug to reproduce it, and goes back home.

Back home, Jessup keeps doing as much of the drug as he can and having Bob Balaban record results. They can't up the dosage any more so Jessup hops back in to the self deprivation tank to create a more extreme experience.

In his next session, Jessup states he is having a vision of early man, hunting a deer and killing it. Suddenly he states he is one of them, killing the deer. He begins to grunt like an animal. The two pull him out. He's incredibly pale, blood seeping out of his mouth. He can't speak, and has difficulty breathing. He insists they do an X-ray. It shows that there is a vocalizing lump in the front part of his throat. Jessup claims that his body had begun to revert to a simian state. The medical doctor agrees, stating the throat X-rays looks like that of a gorilla.

Luckily his throat returns to normal. So Jessup finishes up his day by having over a student of his and sleeping with her.

Our hero, people!

At this point we hardly feel sorry for him as his body suddenly begins to twist and bulge in the middle of the night, shifting in and out of neanderthal shapes. It's a horrific sequence, disturbing as hell. You certainly didn't expect the film to shift into body horror.

Jessup feels normal after a while. but sees visions of lava explosions, the birthing of the Earth all around him. Not a good sign.

He goes to pick up Emily from the airport the next day. She asks how he is doing.

“Oh, fine.”

Yeah right.

Emily has been told what Jessup has been doing and is worried, which of course pisses off Jessup even more. The guy is obviously obsessed with reaching the truth and root of existence, much as Emily surmised earlier, and we see he has no fear of even losing his own soul, again true to her word. The only thing that allows us to give a shit about him at this point is that Emily cares for him and she's decent people, okay?

So back Jessup goes into the tank with his ayahuasca or whatever it is. Alone. The tank door opens from the inside.

The hand that pushes it open is covered in thick hair. He's devolved.

Ape-Jessup escapes the tank room and chases a janitor around the building. Again, this scene is fucking freaky as hell. We can't get a good look at this screaming animal that was Jessup.

The janitor gets a guard to help and chases after him into the boiler room, where we finally get a good look at him when he assaults the security guard and escapes.

AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!

Ape-Jessup runs through the city at night, making his way to the zoo where he kills a antelope and eats it. The Ape-Jessup sequence goes on way too long, but is nonetheless unforgettable. The makeup is much more convincing than the above picture suggests, and whoever performed Ape-Jessup did an admirable job.

The cops find an unconscious Jessup in the zoo and bring him in. Emily picks him up and questions him. Jessup admits everything that he can remember. He also admits that he probably killed that security guard. And once again doesn't seem to give a shit. Prick. He calls it the most supremely satisfying time of his life.

Even Emily seems disgusted with him. But, she's also fascinated with what he's accomplished. As an anthropologist, his transformation fascinates her. And so, she agrees to help oversee his next session. Big mistake.

Before the big session Emily and Jessup romantically reconnect, and then into the climactic session we go!

Get your popcorn ready!

After a few hours in to the session, the video monitor shows Jessup begin to literally melt apart like goo, reverting to primordial ooze, the very beginning of existence. An attempt to open the isolation tank doors blasts everyone unconscious, as light and energy pour forth. Emily is the only one left. She sees Jessup's life energy pulse from within the tank.

Rain pours down around them. The pipes on the walls twist and turn like jelly. The ground is covered with a pool of swirling fog and energy. Emily advances toward the vortex of the tank.

In the emptiness of the beginning of everything, Emily seizes the energy before her and reconstitutes Jessup.

They take him home. While he sleeps, Emily rages over the fact that she loves such a insane bastard, and can't get over him. And, then, after Bob Balaban leaves, leaving Emily alone, Jessup wakes up.

He sweetly admits that the truth he learned was that there was no learnable truth, just unknowable horror, and all that's real is human experience. And he'll be a good boy from now on. Well too bad!

Because that horrible truth isn't done with him, and it's back to goo-Jessup! Emily tries to help him, grabbing him, but this in turn effects her, turning her into a shimmering lava form of herself. Both of them begin to self-destruct as Jessup, enraged, watching her in pain, struggles to retake his humanity, slamming himself into the wall, reforming himself through sheer will and physicality. He grabs her and brings her back, mirroring what she did for him during the final session. They embrace naked in the hallway. He finally admits, “I love you, Emily.”

Fade to credits.

Awww true love!

What can I say to sum up? Awesome 80's practical effects. Genius wacko go-for-it Ken Russell directing. Out of this world vision sequences. A awake and actually remarkable performance from William Hurt. An occasionally turgid but often fascinating script by the ever ornery Paddy Chayefsky. Whats not to like?

Well, the ending is a little rushed. The ape sequence goes on for a little too long and takes up perhaps too much of the films overall running time. The central love story is, well... a little hard to swallow, but hey, I guess there really is somebody out there for everyone. Even self-absorbed, deadbeat, cheating, sensory deprivation loving, ayahuasca dropping, Harvard teachers with a messiah complex!

And on that note, aliens from A.I. Artifical Intelligence, have a good day, and don't leave poor Teddy alone with no one to keep him company!

Sayonara!

#altered states #ken russell #movies #review #funny?

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narrysgolden · 4 years ago

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I can’t for the life of me find if I posted chapter 1 on this blog but it’s on my second blog so excuse. Here finally after like more than a year I have chapter 2 of the amnesia fic! Apologies that it’s short (I wrote most of it a year ago) and I know nothing about the medical field. P.s. I’m not a writer so sorry if my grammar sucks 😂

Over Again - Chapter 2

Chapter 1

HARRY

Beep………..beep…………beep………

As a fluttered my eyes open to a distant beeping, I gasped in instant panic only to realize I had tubes assisting my breathing and wires tangled up all across me. My heart rate rose dramatically and I failed at trying to sit up and look around. Everything hurt. Everything was in a daze. My hearing was muffled and vision was blurry, although I could make out two familiar figures to my left.

“Mr Styles”, the voice rang through my head. “You were in a car accident. You’ve been in the ICU at St Thomas’ since last night.”

It all felt like a dream, or really a nightmare. The harsh fluorescent lighting, the overlaying sounds of machines and faint chaos in the background. The unfamiliar man who just spoke words of disbelief. The women on the right who I could finally make out were my Mum and Gemma. I attempted to call out for them, but nothing came out. I couldn’t speak. Was I really dying? Is this my crossover into the unknown? The light just seemed to get brighter and my disorientation was strong.

Suddenly, I seemed to snap out of it, and all I could think about was one thing.

“Where’s Niall?” I finally managed to croak out of my desert dry throat.

The look on everyone’s face was a mix of relief, confusion, and worry as they all turned to look towards the corner of the room. A vaguely familiar boy stepped out from the shadows timidly. I couldn’t put my finger on it but something was just different about him. His face? His hair? His arms? Chest?

“Baby…” I spoke softly with a slight question in tone.

All of a sudden Niall’s face dropped. He turned white as a ghost, stopped in his tracks, and bolted for the door. Okay this was definitely a dream. Why was Niall acting so weird? Why did he look so off? I looked around best I could, studied this foreign body that was seemingly mine, all stitched, strapped, and wired up. My left leg was in a cast, slung up so it hung above the bed a little. My chest was wrapped up tightly, feeling like it was contributing to my loss of breath. And I could feel gauze shifting along my forehead as I moved my eyes around the room.

The room started spinning as my heartrate picked up again, feeling uneasy and only wanting Niall to come hold my hand and tell me everything will be okay.

“I feel sick” I mumbled, closing my eyes and leaning back into the stiff hospital pillow.

“Go check on Niall, I’ll watch over him.” I heard my Mum say to Gemma.

NIALL

I sped down the hospital corridor until I reached a dead end emergency exit, threw myself against the wall, and sunk to the floor. Curling my knees up to my chest and wrapping my arms around tightly, I took in one deep breath after another in an attempt to stop hyperventilating.

It was all too much. Just seeing Harry for the first time in years was enough, the fact that he could’ve been on his deathbed was another thing, but for him to say those words, as if nothing had ever happened between them, was on another level of cruel. I was finally moved on with my life, happy for once, so I thought.

I lifted my head just enough to noticed Gemma coming down the hall in a rush to see if I was alright. “Oh Niall, come here”, she said, kneeling down to put her arms around me comfortingly. “Are you alright? You gave us all a right scare in there.”

“Did you not hear him Gem? What does he think he’s doing? Asking for me immediately, calling me…..that….. He’s insane!”

“Niall, honey, he was just in a major accident, head trauma and all that. It’s not too far off for him to be missing you in a situation like this.” She spoke softly, trying to reassure me it meant nothing, but we both knew that wasn’t the case.

“Do you think….” My voice trailed off as the worst possible scenario….was it really the worst? Potentially, yeah, the worst possible scenario flooded through my mind. Was Harry experiencing some sort of amnesia and thinking that we were still together? There’s no way…

I could see Gemma was reading my face and beginning to pick up on my theory. “The doctor did say temporary amnesia was common is head trauma patients.”

After another 15 minutes of sitting in the cold dim hallway in contemplation, Anne poked her head out the doorframe and motioned for us to make our way back to the room. Gemma turned to look at me with an unspoken “are you gonna be okay?”. I nodded softly and pushed myself up off the floor as if I was using the last bit of energy I had saved up. We made our way back to the room to find Harry was drifting off to sleep.

The doctor pulled all three of us aside and brought his voice down low to make sure Harry couldn’t hear. Anne and the doctor lookd back and forth at each other as if they were reading each others minds before looking back to me and Gemma.

“So, Harry believes that it is 2015. Signaling to use that he is experiencing amnesia with this head trauma of his. Now, because this is a full 3 year gap in memory, we don’t take this lightly. With amnesia patients we have to take things slowly in order to not overwhelm them and confuse them more. We don’t want any more stress on the boy than he already has. For the time being, go along with what he thinks, what he has to say, to an extent of course. We must bring him around slowly when he is in a stable place of healing.”

Yep I was right. 2015. Harry thinks we are still together. Harry thinks that One Direction is still together…. Oh God, his hair. MY hair. Does he even know he lives part time in LA now? And all his new tattoos. I don’t even know what he’s got inked all over his body anymore.

Not even seconds after the doctor finished speaking, a tall blonde woman ran into the room yelling “Where is he? Is he okay?”

Camille. Shit.

Anne grabbed her immediately and spun her around back out of the room, hopefully explaining in detail about Harry’s condition and how he probably doesn’t know who she is. Yikes. Thank god Harry was asleep when she barged in.

As Anne was taking care of the girlfriend situation, I turned back to Harry. He seemed so small in that hospital bed. Almost unrecognizable with the mounds of gauze, tangles of wires, and rough red patches all over his bruised skin. I got tunnel vision again, only being able to lock my eyes on him, sleeping not so soundly in the sterile room.

I walked over to him quietly, trying not to disturb him too much. Sitting down in the chair next to the bed, I studied his features, ones that seemed to be unfamiliar to me. His curly brown locks, now short and matted down underneath his bandage, still looked soft and as beautiful as I remembered. He was now growing facial hair, something I hadn’t pictured Harry with before, although it suited the chiseled features of his face better than expected. I noticed some scribbled ink on his unbandaged knee, but was unable to make out the word.

Harry started to make mumbled sounds in his sleep, his arm twitching and body moving as if he were stuck in a nightmare. Without thinking, my instincts reached my hand out to touch his, noticing black chipped polish adorning his delicate fingernails. I rubbed circles on the back of his hand with my thumb in an attempt to soothe his terrified mind.

“Harry” I spoke softly. He was still tossing and turning, strain seen on his face, getting antsier by the second. I needed to get him out of his own head. My heart raced with every moment that went by, more concerned than I was before. I grabbed his shoulder carefully, speaking to him more directly now. “Harry. Harry, look at me.”

His eyes darted open with a gasp, tears stinging his under eyes as he looked at me with so much pain on his face.

“It’s okay, I’m here.”

HARRY

I didn’t know what was happening, but I knew I was crying. And to open my eyes and see Niall inches in front of me, calloused hand on my shoulder, telling me it’s going to be alright, had me crying that much more. All I wanted was to give him the biggest hug of my life, but I couldn’t move, not enough.

He could tell that I was freaking out and continued to console me until my breathing regulated, my eyes dried up, and a smile actually crept on my face.

It was almost 4pm now. My Mum had disappeared at one point, Gemma saying she had to run home for a bit. Gemma did the same about an hour ago, so it was just Niall and I now. Niall sat to my left, scrolling through his phone, looking frustrated at messages he was receiving, hoping they would stop.

“Everything alright babe?” I asked. His face scrunched up as if in pain and he took a deep breath before looking up to me. “Yeah, fine.”

I laid my head back on the bed, thoughts spinning through my head, still trying to wrap my head around this accident I had no memory of. I looked down to where the IV was placed delicately in the crook of my arm, surrounded by familiar ink. The heart on my bicep, the holy bible on my forearm, the dainty A, and....what does that say....latelate? Why don’t I remember that being there? When did I get that?

I tried to reach over with my right hand to graze across the unfamiliar ink, but couldn’t reach from being practically tied to the bed with so many wires.

Niall noticed my struggle. “What’s up?” He looked to me quizzically.

“.....Late Late?” I whispered out. I could tell he could see the confusion on my face. And with my response, equal confusion appeared on Niall’s.

It took him a second to form his thoughts before busting out a laugh that seemed a little off. “You don’t remember that bet you lost with James? Serves you right you were piss drunk.”

That still didn’t really make sense to me. Even being blackout drunk, surely I would’ve remembered someone telling me the story the next day. But I didn’t have the brain power to question it any further. “Oh, ha, yeah right” I half heartedly chuckled before closing my eyes and sighing.

With every ounce of me wanting nothing more than for this all to be over and get back to my life, my life is all I could think about. Oh god the band. Do they know about my accident? I should call them, no, I’m sure Niall did. FUCK we have so much promo to do. We JUST released drag me down. Who knows when the hell I’m even getting out of this hospital room. And tour....shit. I know we talked about not having a tour this time but....now that’s really not happening. The absolute stress this is going to put on everyone....

I must’ve looked distressed as I feel Niall’s warm hand reach over to my shoulder, rubbing in soothing circles. “Hey” he spoke softly, “we’ll figure it all out”. Niall could always read my mind. No matter what it was, we were on the same wavelength. I cracked open my eyes again to see the blon...brunette? boy staring up at me, another thing my damaged brain couldn’t wrap my head around.

I reached my still constrained arm up to grab the dark locks. Niall instinctively leaned in to close the distance. My cool, stiff fingers fell into the chocolate locks that felt soft and clean, not dry and broken like it used to. “Your hair...” I whispered.

Niall pulled my hand down, kissed it softly and shook his head with chuckle. “Go back to sleep, Harry.”

#narry #Niall Horan #Harry styles #narry fic #over again #amnesia fic

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12/09/2020 DAB Transcript

Joel 1:1-3:21, Revelation 1:1-20, Psalms 128:1-6, Proverbs 29:18

Today is the 9th day of December welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I am Brian and it is a joy and an honor and a privilege to be here with you today just like it is every day of the year. I'm excited for us to take our next step forward in the Scriptures. That next step forward is actually going to lead us into new territory in both old and new Testaments. So, we have two books that we are entering into today that we need to talk about and the first one that we will encounter is the next of the minor prophets in the Old Testament, and this book is known as Joel and we’ll read the entire book of Joel in our reading today. So, let’s just kind of get a little bit of understanding of what we’re reading.

Introduction to the book of Joel:

Nobody really knows exactly which Joel wrote the book of Joel. There are people…other people in the Bible that have the name Joel but…but scholars believe that these are the…any of them are the author of this prophetic book although the language of the book does share kind of a style with other prophets, prophets, like Ezekiel or Jeremiah or Amos or Micah in the minor prophets or Zephaniah. So, that leads to conjecture like so much of the scholarship that surrounds the origins of the Bible. On the one hand it…it could be that the book of Joel is the work of more than one prophet or it could be that the writer of Joel, Joel, this Joel that we’re talking about was in fellowship with other prophets, maybe even in close proximity to other prophets, so they shared kind of a common vernacular. And, so, with repeated readings of these texts these similarities become apparent. But those are like plausible ideas. The text itself doesn't really give any historical clues. So, dating the book is really, really difficult at least with any precision. If we’re just kind of like aggregating the ideas, somewhere between 500 and 800 B.C. like a three-century span here, somewhere between 500 and 800 years before Jesus came. And what we’ll see is that Joel wrote of this massive overwhelming horde of locusts that invaded the land and just destroyed the vegetation of the land, including all the crops. And, so, following that, as you can imagine, famine because there's no food. And, so, a plague and then a great famine. And Joel uses this as the backdrop to call the children of Israel to repentance. And its thought that the locusts…like this isn’t a vision, this isn't like a metaphor or an allegory. There probably was this type of locust invasion and people knew of the circumstances and had endured these things. And, so, when Joel's speaking of these things people know exactly what he's talking about and so they’re listening. And as is the case with the other prophets, the prophet is essentially announcing a fork in the road like that. Things have reached a point where like this is the last stop. This is where you either get off the train or you stay on the train and go straight into destruction. And if they stay on the train headed for destruction, then…then they will encounter the great and terrible day of the Lord as Joel describes it. But there is an alternative path as there typically is in the prophets, a path of restoration, a path of repentance. And following that path in the book of Joel leads us to some of the most encouraging and famous passages in the Scriptures, things like “I'll pour out my spirit upon all people and your sons and your daughters will prophesy, and your old men will dream dreams, and your young men will see visions”, stuff like that. So, God through Joel is saying, “you can have the great and terrible day of the Lord, or you can have Me pouring out my spirit upon all of you. The choice is yours.” And friends, the choice is still ours. And, so, let's dive into the book of Joel understanding that not matter what's been going on, no matter what the locusts have eaten, restoration is still always possible. And, so, we’re reading from the English Standard Version this week. Joel its entirety, which is three chapters.

Introduction to the book of Revelation:

Okay. So, that is Joel in its entirety and now we flip the page or flip several pages into the New Testament, and we find ourselves at the very final book in the New Testament, and this book is called Revelation. And there isn’t a book in the Bible that seems to have captured the fascination of…of its readers more than this book. And it's been interpreted many, many various ways through many various lenses over many centuries, in fact, over thousands of years. And these interpretations can be fantastic just wild stuff and then there are more pragmatic attempts to try to find out what's going on in this book. And, so, revelation tells us, it self-identifies the author as is John. It's just…we don’t have like a last name. We didn't have those then. And, so, which John are we talking about because this is not particularly an uncommon name? So, traditionally we would accept the author being the apostle John who wrote other portions of the New Testament as well - the gospel of John and first, second and third John. But this isn’t like a straight line and this isn't like modern scholarship trying to tear things apart. that's been questioned since at least the third century and that debate continues to the presence but without, you know, without new evidence, without something archaeologically being discovered that would give more clues or that would paint a more complete picture, the tradition…the tradition holds just as strongly as any other explanation that the…it was the apostle John who probably wrote this text. So, this being the case, it's not just any John who was exiled to the island of Patmos it's…it’s John the evangelist, the disciple of Jesus who was banished to the island of Patmos where Revelation was written. And it’s believed that Patmos, it…Patmos still exists, it’s still an island today. But at the time it's…it's like a Roman penal colony, a place of criminal and political exile. So, rather than just dealing with all these people they just put em’ on this island and let them sort it out under the guard of the Roman…Roman military. And like I said, it’s still an island. You can still go there. You can visit Patmos. It’s in the Aegean Sea. It’s like between modern-day Greece and Turkey and not too far actually from Ephesus where the tradition holds that John spent the elder…elderly years of his life. But here's where it gets interesting. Here's where the intrigue about the book of Revelation begins. It is a work in the genre of literature known as apocalyptic literature. This type of literature is highly symbolic, highly allegorical. And, so, when you read the book of Revelation and you have to kind of have your discerner…if that’s a word…you have to have discernment, you have to be paying attention because you find that as you go through this, you're taking certain things to be literal, you’re taking other things to be allegorical or symbolic and you have to wonder why you're doing that. How is that happening? How do you decide? And because we have so much seemingly symbolic language and be…because it appears that the subject matter here is the end of all things as we know it, like the end of the world and the beginning of the next, well then you’ve got a good recipe because everybody’s interested in that topic. Like if there's going to be the end of the world then we should probably have as much understanding about that as we can get. So, we would read this at different than say a poetic allegorical poem like the Song of Songs, right? So, we can read Song of songs and put different lenses on and go, “this is Christ's love for His bride, this is God's love for His people. This is just a beautiful portrayal of love between a man and a woman.” And we could be fine with that but you overlay the end of the world into that mix and you’re paying attention, but you still have highly symbolic language to…to discern and work your way through. And, so, as you can imagine, there have been thousands of very unique diverse interpretations over thousands of years. So, some scholars would say this is a very, very important book. Obviously, it's in the New Testament. Pulling it apart and trying to lay the pieces, the components out and then put them back together, this is indeed a prophetic utterance, but it is meant for people in the first century and contains a first century perspective and the sym…symbolism is something that would be understood better in the first century context. And, so, they conclude that the book of Revelation is already been completely fulfilled. That's like one way of looking at it. Others see like that Revelation outlines a chain of events that starts when this was written in the first century but lasts until…well…until the end of the world. And then others believe that the symbolism is the thing that keeps the relevance. It's…it's poetic and so can be interpreted and brought into any time period. So, it's timeless, and is ultimately describing the overarching cosmic struggle that we find in the Bible between good and evil. And the thing is, all of that can be legitimate. Like all of that can be right but even knowing that we still pretty much have only ever gotten it wrong because what happens is that we get intrigued in all these details and we’re trying to fit them together and overlay them into the time that we live in and come to some sort of conclusion that this is it…this is all going down right now. The problem is that's what's been going on for 2000 years. So many, many, many, many generations have looked into this and overlaid it into their time and said this is happening now. And yet 100% of the time until right now they've been wrong. One thing that I can tell you that is a right though, remember when we started getting into the letters and started to move to Paul and I'm telling you like this theme of endurance is going to show up and it's going to be unrelenting all the way until we end the Scriptures and understand how important that word, endurance, actually is to our faith journey, that is probably as clear as it can get in the book of Revelation, the final book of the Bible because it's a fundamental theme in the book of Revelation. In some ways, it almost feels like we've been pulled forward in this theme of endurance all the way to this point where we can see its enduring, not just kind of enduring healing because you broke your leg or enduring the transition of a job. It's…it's enduring until the very, very end, enduring until the end of all things. And Revelation ultimately tells us that those who stay faithful, those who endure and stay faithful to the testimony of Jesus until the very end will then experience eternal victory. And that brings us to one of the famous passages in the book of Revelation –“they overcame, they defeated evil by the blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony.” Here's the thing, this theme of endurance that we’ve been working our way through for months, and it has probably encouraged us on days that we needed to endure and enduring is never easy, but as we kind of come to the end of the Bible and this theme becomes dominant, we begin to realize that this is…endurance isn't just sitting still and suffering until something is over. It’s not a passive waiting thing. It's not like some sort of defensive posture. It's actually a very conscious active thing that we are doing understanding that it's going somewhere. It's our endurance in the face of deception, our holding true to the blood of the lamb and the word of our testimony. In the face of the entire world being dissected around us, we’re to remain true. When I say, “we are to remain true” I’m talking about the people at the very end that are spoken of in this book. It's their witness that remains until the very end so that there was always a chance for anyone to turn. And when everyone who is going to turn has turned then things get very bleak and they come to an end and a new beginning emerges. And, so, let's dive into the book of Revelation. This will carry us until December 31st in the New Testament, until the end of our year. And we will notice that as we begin the book of Revelation, we begin by hearing from Jesus. Jesus writes some letters to some churches and that sets the backdrop. Revelation 1.

Prayer:

Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for bringing us into this territory, this new territory across the board…board in both old and new Testaments. And Lord we invite your Holy Spirit as we now encounter and move into and move through the final book in the New Testament, the book of Revelation. Show us what we need to see. Give us what we need to take with us into the future. From the very beginning of this year we've been asking for something specific because it's something that you told us Jesus that we need - eyes to see, ears to hear. And, so, this is again our prayer as we move through the rest of this month, as we move through the territory that we’re moving through in the Bible. Give us eyes to see and ears to hear what you're saying. We pray this in the incomparable immeasurable name of our Savior Jesus. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is home base, it’s the website, it’s where you find out what’s going on around here.

And really, the things to talk about are Christmas related because that's where this is headed. That's where we’re going. And, so, the first thing is we have an annual program and …sort of like our annual Christmas party. And, so, for the next week beginning yesterday you can call in your holiday greetings to the community that you’ve been spending the year going to the Bible together with. And you can use the Hotline button for that or the phone number 877-942-4253. And that might sound familiar because that's how we send in our prayer requests and encouragements to each other. And, so, we’re gonna use that same apparatus to collect our holiday greetings. There's just one kind of rule…rule about it. Don’t call a holiday greeting mixed with a prayer request or anything like that. If you’re gonna call in a holiday greeting, call in a holiday greeting and let that be that. If you have some other things going on or you wanna pray for somebody or you want to ask for prayer, do that separately. This is like the only time year that you can do like multiple…like you can do that, call and then call right back. We’ll take those calls for the next week and then we’ll start assembling everything and create our annual Christmas gathering and I can't wait for it. It's always virtual because we’re a virtual community but this year, especially. It’s like we get to do this without a…we don’t have to change a thing. There can be viruses running around the world or pandemics. We don't have to change a thing. We’re gonna do what we always do and it’s gonna be beautiful as it always is. So, you can call those in now.

And then the other thing is the Daily Audio Bible Shop and shopping. Go there and look for resources that you might want to use to invite others along for the journey, or just to encourage their…their faith. There are written resources in book form, like the God of Your Story or Sneezing Jesus or Reframe or Passages. Like, there's there are books there. There are all kinds resources from things to wear to things to write with, to things to write in. Our Global Campfire candle is in the Shop. We worked so hard on that with a perfumer last year, with a sent a designer to get a candle that smells like a campfire but still smells good, not like ashy, like still smells good like a campfire to remind us. It's amazing how aroma actually brings us to a place. And, so, to have the Global Campfire candle reminds us that we’re in community together. All kinds resources like that. The Daily…or the Wind Farm coffee, our entire line of coffee that we roast fresh and send you our entire line of tea because these are activities that we do most every day. We drink something warm…not everybody…but most people drink either a cup of coffee or a cup of tea in the morning and maybe even throughout the day. I do. Everyone around here does. And, so, we created this line well over a decade ago because it's kind of part of the journey. It's nice to have a cup of coffee and allow God's word to be spoken over us and gives some things to think about and move into our day. It’s just part of the rhythm. All those resources and more are available in the Shop. If you spend $40 or more in the Shop, we will send you this year the 2020 Christmas ornament for the Daily Audio Bible included in your order. So, check that out.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible here in the latter part of the year, then thank you. Thank you humbly and deeply. Sincerely, we wouldn't be here if we weren't in this together. So, thank you. If this has made a difference, then thank you for your partnership. There is a link on the homepage at dailyaudiobible.com. If you’re using the app, you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner, or the mailing address is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

And, as always, if you have a prayer request or encouragement, or right now holiday greeting then you can hit the Hotline button in the app, or you can dial 877-942-4253.

And that's it for today. I’m Brian I love you and I'll be waiting for you here tomorrow.

Community Prayer ad Praise:

Hi everybody it’s Lisa the Encourager I just wanted to remind everyone of something that I wrote down after Brian read the last part of second Peter and I just called it when I wrote it down in my notes I just wrote it down as Peter’s charge. And I thought it’s…it was so good the way he reminded us that, you know, we should honor Peter in this last message that he gave to us as followers of Christ and basically telling us that, you know, this would be things that you would follow in the gift of having the rich welcome into the kingdom of Jesus Christ. And, so, I love that. And, so, there are seven beautiful principles to follow. And, so, the first one is goodness and the second one is knowledge. And we’re certainly getting all that through Brian and also reading the Bible every day. Self-control, which we could all use that especially with the busy holidays and busy traffic and even with our families continuing to have self-control with those that we love the most. Perseverance and walking with Christ, mutual affection and respect for all. I love that…just…just having mutual affection for, you know, people that we interact with. And then godliness, mirroring the way we are like Jesus, so continuing to have godliness. And then the last one is love. Again, just reminding us to show love to all and everything we do and all of our actions, like put those word to action. So, I wrote them down because I need reminding of this. So, I hope it helps you. I also shared them with my children…

Good morning DAB family my name is Pamela and I’m calling from Toronto Canada. It’s December 5th 130 in the morning and I’m calling for prayers, to ask for prayers for my son in Jamaica. His name is Ray. For him to turn his life over to Jesus because it’s the only way. And I’m praying for my other family members, nephews, and nieces, sisters, brothers. And I am also praying…asking for prayer for myself. I’m having pain all over my body. Sciatica pain, arthritis pain. So, I’m asking for your prayers and I just want to say thank you Brian and your family for the beautiful work you’ve been doing through Jesus. Thank you. I love you all. In Jesus name. Amen.

Hi DAB family this is Radiant Rachel and like Jane in the Everglades I’m going to pray Psalm 191 over us and with us for anybody who is in battle against demonic attacks. And I’m also specifically calling out protection and clarity for Janna and her family - Billy, Amber, Roland, Braden and Izzy. I may have one of those names wrong, but God knows his name and also over the state of Washington where they currently reside. Lord, we choose to live in the shelter of the most-high where we will find rest in the shadow of the Almighty. You alone Lord are our refuge, our place of safety. You are our God we trust You. Thank You, Lord for rescuing us from every trap and protecting us from deadly disease. We are covered with Your feathers. You shelter us with Your wings. Your faithful promises Lord are our armor and protection. We will not be afraid of the terrors of the night nor the arrows that fly in the day. We do not dread the disease that stocks in the darkness nor the disaster that strikes at midday. Though 10,000 fall at our side, though 10,000s are dying around us these evils will not touch us. Open our eyes Lord that we may see all the wicked are punished. You are our refuge. You Lord are the most-high and You are our shelter. No evil will conquer us. No plague will come near our home. You Lord have ordered the angels to protect us wherever we go. They hold us up with their hands so that we won’t hurt our foot on the stone. Thank You, Lord for the strength to trample lions and cobras and the strength to crush fierce lions and serpents under our feet. You tell us Lord that You will rescue those that love You. We love You Lord. You will protect those who trust in You name. We trust in You. Thank You for answering when we call on Your name. Thank You for being with us when we are in trouble. Lord, thank You for rescuing and honoring us and rewarding us with a long life and giving us salvation. In Jesus’ name we pray all these things. And we thank You for all these things. Amen.

I recently learned the lesson of the bamboo tree and the many parallel analogies between that tree and me that tree can grow so tall so fast that it mystifies the mind 90 feet or more in the first five years much faster than any other tree you’ll find but for the first 4 ½ years you’ll only see a sprout just a tiny shoot above the ground is all that’ll be sticking out but in the last six months of that last 5th year it grows 90 feet and more only the most faithful and loyal cultivators would stick it out to see what’s in store but God is like that in our lives he’s faithful and he’s true and even when we show little or no growth he still gives grace and mercy too most would say just let it die it looks like it’s dead already but God never loses hope for us his hands are true and steady great is his faithfulness morning by morning new mercies we see God changes not his compassions they fail not and as he has been he forever will be and when all our worldly hope is gone and no more friends are left around that sprout we had left for dead becomes a tree high above the ground with roots so deep that the fiercest of storms could never erode its grip it bends it sways some branches may break but mostly it’ll just dip while we see nothing above the ground there’s continual growth below only God can make a tree there so much that we just don’t know but I also know that sometimes it looks like there’s little or no growth in me so I’m thankful for his loving hands and I’m sure in time all will see that growth was present all the time and God was present too carefully nurturing day by day so my roots would hold fast too don’t be so quick to judge that shoot that’s barely out of the ground God has the power to make it as strong as any of the tree that’s around

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This is from junk to treasure. I want to talk about our voices for couple minutes. I have heard so many people on the DAB mention of a miss the voice of someone who used to call in for prayers or someone who will comment about how they love to hear from those who call in regularly. The study of the voice and the ability to recognize voices is so complex and amazing. Like our unique fingerprints everyone has a voice identity due to pitch and tone rhythm and tempo and texture and so on. Also, many of us have little catchphrases that are used for their own special way of expression like when I say “kiss kiss”, “shalom shalom”, “okay Holy Spirit let’s roll”, or “in the name of Jesus!” You would know exactly who I’m referring to without me even using their name. I love to hear Grandpa Bob on here. His voice is so calming and soothing. He expresses such a sense of sincerity that you want to hear from him more and more. But there is one voice that is above all others and that is the voice of the One who has the power of creation and judgment, that of healing and forgiveness. It calms a raging storm and raises people from the dead. How do we recognize the voice of the Lord? By spending quiet time contemplating in His word. I believe we also hear from God in the voices of those who call in for prayer and encouragement every time they throw their log in the community campfire. Each day I find that I long to hear and get into the word with Brian every day and to hear the wonderful unique voices of my DAB family and I praise God for the ability to recognize and to hear from each and every one of you.

Hello DAB family this is Russell from superior. I just had a call talking to my daughter. She told me she’s injecting drugs. Ask you all to pray for her and keep her safe. Thank you.

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